


And Your Enemies Closer

by Wikiaddicted723



Category: Fringe
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2017-11-16 10:44:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 43,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wikiaddicted723/pseuds/Wikiaddicted723
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The universe is made of patterns that repeat, complicated weaves, circles within circles. Like checkpoints, touchstones in our myriad paths, a crossroads. The choice is the pattern.</p><p>Here, Peter Bishop is cured, never stolen. Olivia Dunham lives a life of loss, of sacrifice and courage. They meet in the middle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: In Media Res

**Author's Note:**

> This is a thing that has been written since spring. It had not been posted because it's the very first part of yet another long ass fic that has been plotted out extensively (many thanks, once again, to Chichuri). I'm putting it up here now, not knowing if I'll ever finish it, but hoping that having it somewhere other than my hard drive will remind me to get back to it with a little more regularity. Also, because the show is going to end soon, and this might reduce the pain for you guys and me both.

They bring him in for questioning. He knew they would, eventually.

They come for him soon after his capture, soon enough that they haven’t had a chance to move him out of the holding cell in the Division and into more permanent quarters, somewhere in the dungeon of a supermax prison, he imagines. Their quickness is an unexpected kindness, an unplanned one, but present nonetheless. There is really no point in delaying the inevitable.

Perhaps, he thinks, they never mean to put him there. It would be far simpler, he supposes, to drive him somewhere out of the way and put a bullet in the back of his skull to give a swift end to their troubles. He’s not a naturalized citizen, after all, and procuring him a cell would mean heaps of fabricated paperwork, covered in as many miles of red tape as everything he is, everything he’s done. It would mean time they do not have, time that trickles down the hourglass above all their heads, turning endlessly towards the end.

It’s morning when the door opens, the crisp, bright light outlining the shapes of the armed guards that flank the entrance and, of course, his escort’s. He does not expect to see Lincoln Lee, but then again he doesn’t know what to expect of anything anymore. Peter squints, then resumes his position against the wall, looking down at a spot on the floor riddled with hairline fissures that he’s traced into maps, filled with silver thread and defined with the blood on his hands.

Lincoln – Agent Lee would be more appropriate, he supposes – has him handcuffed with his hands behind his back. Lincoln gives the order, doesn’t do it himself, and glares with his bespectacled eyes from ten paces away with what might have been badly concealed contempt as the other agent shoves him out the door.

Peter can’t blame the man.

He feels numb, slow. Like the world has sped up around him and left him behind to follow a cold trail on a twisting path. When had things gotten so out of hand?

The military, _his_ military, teaches soldiers to analyze a situation by looking backwards at the facts. Start by the end and follow the thread to its conclusion and you might get closer to the perp. Find a motive, when you have the facts, and the guilty party will emerge like invisible ink when put to flame. It’s nothing but a game, one with people as pieces and infinite stakes. In the small hours he’s spent with himself inside that room he’s replayed it all in every direction he knows, every word and gesture and order given, every omission, backwards and forwards and upside-down, and still the reasons escape him. It’s the facts that remain, engraved in every fictional point of his supposed IQ.

He’d sworn an oath to serve and protect, and he’s done nothing but render it to ashes in the name of…what, exactly? Survival? His father would be proud.

The trail of his thoughts halts as the agent yanks him to a stop, Lincoln stepping ahead to swipe his security card on the door to the interrogation aisle, the one with rooms specifically designated for maximum security suspects in the far back of the Division quarters, to the right of the situation room, right behind Broyles’ raised office. He’s been in here before, many times.

It’s just been a long time since he was on the wrong side of the table.

“I’ll take it from here, Agent,” he hears Lincoln say, and the other man releases him immediately, stepping back but remaining in the background.  He wonders what these men have been told about him, to keep them so alert in his presence. He doubts “aiming for the destruction of the universe” was a part of it.

The moment the heavy-set door closes after them, leaving the agent behind, he asks, “How is she?”

It’s the only question he can’t keep himself from asking, and what that might say of him he doesn’t bother to decipher. Lincoln looks at him squarely, what warmth might have remained in his ice-blue eyes gone like ashes in the wind.

He answers, and Peter is thankful for that small kindness. “Hurt…Angry.”

The man pauses, searches for something in his face that he can’t find, “How did you expect her to be?”

Another question without an answer in the pool of their misfortune, he supposes. He looks away, and Lincoln pushes him into the room without preamble.

Lincoln bids him sit, his chair pushed close to the table’s edge, and attaches the handcuffs to a small steel loop on the top surface, limiting his movement. Like he’s got somewhere else to go this side of the rabbit hole, Peter thinks absently. Lincoln Lee leaves the room without looking back.

An indeterminate amount of time later, the door clicks open. His interrogator is here. He doesn’t need to look up to know who it’s going to be, the only person fit for the job, in this universe and the next:

Olivia.


	2. The Breach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically a rewrite of the season 2 finale, and some of the details stay the same. Episodes written by Joel Wyman, Jeff Pinkner and Akiva Goldsman.

_Fringe Division Head Quarters, Manhatan._

 

“This might sting a little, Captain,” the nurse warns. A small woman, golden skinned, barely in her twenties. In different circumstances, the captain might even have considered her pretty. He might even have asked her out. He simply nods now, brooding, his eyes glazed over and far, far away.

It _does_ sting, and he’s thankful for the burning sensation every time the cotton swab touches his face and the shallow wounds scattered on his forearms and neck, like fire licking at the driest of woods. It brings him back down to the here and now, fishes him out from that void in the back of his mind that has been filled to the brim with a crumbling world and the screams of dying children.

He had gotten lucky today. Lucky that Red had been there to force him out of the school, lucky that they’d placed the canisters on the other end of the building; lucky that he was heavy enough and big enough that the window she’d kicked him through on their way out had broken into pieces so small as to make the damage minimal. He’d take a hundred thousand scrapes and cuts like these on his skin over being stuck in amber any day. The kicking, on the other hand, had been most definitely unnecessary – he would have jumped through on his own, but you go tell her that.

Still, getting his ass kicked – literally – through that window had probably been the thing that had saved both their lives. 

The nurse finishes quickly, has him sign the report for the health insurance with a press of his thumb on her screen and sends him on his way, as far away as he can get from anything medical. Peter Bishop has always had a particular hate for hospitals. He figures having had to visit one more frequently than a patient with severe renal failure from the ages of five to nine had probably had a hand in that.

He ends up at the changing room, the sound of rushing water from the showers next door lulling him into a not-unpleasantly-catatonic state as he lies face up on the bench, legs on either side and bent at ninety degrees to keep his feet on the ground. It’s as close to sleeping as he ever gets while on call, and it’s approaching seventy hours since he last laid his head on a pillow. It’s been a hectic week, this one.

It’s crazy, being able to get used to this. Used to seeing people frozen in time in front of their eyes, to running around putting Band-Aids on the fabric of the crumbling universe in a futile attempt at prolonging their existence. Crazy, that the cost of survival is balanced out with the lives they are forced to cut short without notice. Perhaps it's just crazy, period.

Peter dreams of it often, of being too late, too slow to get out; of looking back without blinking through a filter the color of caramel death, and he sometimes wonders if it wouldn't be better to desist, to give in and go out in one final flash of something close to glory. And maybe he’s thinking all of this now because he’s tired. He’s tired and there’s blood and grime on his skin, his shirt is cut to shreds and his head pounds.

He sacrificed a number of lives today, to keep his own. Seven, if the count was right; a janitor, a teacher, and five of her students – all between the ages of ten and thirteen. It’s a low count for quarantine zones, he knows, lower even if he takes into account that it was a state school they had had to amber. He can already read the headlines in tomorrow’s paper, how the heroic agents of fringe division had saved (insert x number) lives during the evacuation. They will include, of course, a small mention for the fallen, an obituary of sorts, but the type size will be small and most readers will ignore it to preserve their fragile peace. No one ever wants to know who died, no one ever wants to be reminded of their fragility, their lack of control. Mortality is an ever-looming fear, the only one they can’t escape.

Just the thought makes him nauseous. Peter is no hero, he’s just a man doing his job. If he were anything like what the press makes of them, there’d be a shiny red “plus one” on that obituary, one with an equally red asterisk on the top right signaling the place at the bottom that would hold his name, his rank, and date of birth: _Peter Bishop (1978 – 2009), Captain, Fringe Division._  

No, Peter is no hero. 

 

*** 

 

It’s the blaring of the alarms that wakes him with a start, a sound that chills his gut and shakes his bones. Lives have ended, more than he can count, more than he remembers, to the urgent rhythm of that tune.

Peter groans, drags a hand down his face. It’s a good thing they pay him so well. 

He’s up and changed into a clean shirt within the next forty-five seconds, courtesy of a lifetime of military training and a world crumbling at the seams. That’s _his_ tune, after all.

Someone claps him on the back on his way out, once he’s pulled his arms through the worn leather of the holster holding his gun. Peter turns to see Charlie Francis walking at his side, water still dripping down the edges of his slicked-back hair from what he supposes was the remnant of warm water Red had deigned to leave for them. A lifetime of cold showers, one more thing he’s not allowed to forget.

“Busy week this one, eh, kiddo?” his gruff voice asks. Charlie’s a big guy. Not tall, no. He’s average height, the crown of his head barely a couple of inches above Peter’s own line of sight. Tan skinned, broad shouldered, barrel chested. He’s one of the last from the original Fringe, those people brought over for their expertise once the FBI was dissolved, some ten years back, maybe more. He is every bit as old fashioned, and he won’t let you forget it. And though he never did make it past sergeant, everyone else is always a kid, to Charlie.

“Busy was twenty four hours ago,” Peter says, still blinking exhaustion away, reaching into his back pocket to retrieve the last of his mangled energy bars – the kind given to high performance athletes and the like, the kind in endless supply in the cafeteria downstairs, “I just hope this one’s no less than the universe ending.”

At least then I’ll get some sleep, Peter thinks. Charlie just snorts. The universe has been ending for a while now, and here they are, still.

“Oh, Captain, my Captain,” a singsong voice calls from behind. Peter rolls his eyes, and smiles an annoyed kind of smile, the one that’s offered in resignation and defeat, an admission to the fact that whatever he says, he’ll always be the first choice to be butt of their jokes ( _Captain_ , is more than his rank. It’s mocking acceptance of the man he has become, a reminder that he’s earned his place through effort and sweat. A reminder that this is the life he has chosen to lead). Only Charlie’s worms can compare, he supposes, but that’s a different story.

“What now, Dunham?” he asks as she comes to stand by his side, in front of the wall–to–wall screen Peter has always wanted to bring home for game night, Lincoln limiting his usual input in favor of offering a mock salute to her left.

Red wrinkles her nose, “You stink, _Sir._ ”

“Not my fault someone’s a shower hog, honey.”

“Honey?” she pretends offense with a tilt of her chin, a click of her tongue as she bounces on the balls of her feet, in permanent motion, “really?”

“How ‘bout muffin, then?”

“Haven’t we had this conversation before?” They have, hundreds of times. It’s an old argument, a routine by now. She’ll only call him Captain, a mocking tone to her voice, a teasing light to her eyes. He’ll call her whatever comes to mind, and they’ll go on and on until one or the other tires and gives up. It can last hours on end, interrupted by life and by work, but rarely forgotten. Their playtime, Charlie calls it.

It used to make Lincoln jealous, he remembers; though he doubts the man would ever admit it, before he understood it was just their way to connect, before he learned their rhythm enough to become a player himself. And that Liv would tease an army into surrender, if the chance presented itself.

“Captain,” The technician to the far right calls, halting the next quip on his throat, “we have a class one event, Brooklyn area, sir.”

“And here I thought it was gonna be a good day, today.”

“ _Agents,”_ Broyles booms from behind, the deep, rumbling bass settling low at the base of his spine. They turn as one, all four of them. They’ve been well trained.

“Sir,” Lincoln responds, always the first, always the firmest.

“I want both your teams at the site. Evaluate the situation and _contain_ it. You know what to do. Dismissed.”

And just like that, they’re gone.

 

*** 

 

_Brooklyn._

 

“And SitRep says: Class-One Molecular Dissolution, yadda yadda, severe molecular cohesion failure – nothing new there. It seems we got ourselves a big bad hole, team.” 

“Another one?” Lincoln’s tone is filled with speculation. There have been a lot of similar events, lately, all within the edges of the city.

Peter shares his concerns, though he does not voice them. An unforeseen increase in event frequency can mean many things. He’s unwilling to think of the obvious conclusion, for if they cannot contain it, if they cannot keep up with the rate of collapse, then they are all as good as dead, with no purpose left to them. And Peter needs purpose the way he needs air. 

“And you were hoping for the end of the world,” Liv teases, “Poor baby.”

“A guy can dream…” Peter trails off as their transport comes to a stop. It’s time for work.

“Okay people, I want a full sweep of this place yesterday!” Lincoln calls as he walks through the doorway, no more than two steps removed from his side, the way basic training dictates, gun drawn in case there’s more than a vortex potential inside that the stats might have missed. 

They’ve had a few like that in the past. It’s never pretty.

When nothing springs to surprise them, Lincoln walks ahead to center stage, molecular degradation scanner in hand.

What he uncovers this time isn’t pretty either. Peter curses under his breath.

The tear is a large one, misshapen tendrils like angry, shinning red welts; like fractured glass spanning out in the air. Air that vibrates slightly in place, makes the edges of his vision fussy, indistinct, as if he were attempting to look through the heat of the sun in the desert. 

They all know what this means. Lincoln shoots him a look, more acknowledgement than question.

Peter gives a curt nod, a _yes_. They’ve got no options left. His partner taps on his earcuff once, “Sir, this is at least a level three tear. Requesting clearance to start Quarantine Protocol.”

He puts the potentiator in place. It’s a small apparatus, a silver glint in the wide, open space of the stage. It comes to life with a blare.

_WARNING: QUARANTINE PROTOCOL. INITIATED. MASSIVE LOSS OF LIFE IN: 3. MINUTES._

“Alright, put all canisters in place, let’s seal this hole nice and tight, everybody!” Lincoln commands.

“Captain, sir!” one of the soldiers calls, “There is something you should see.” 

 

***

 

“What the hell is _that?_ ” Predictably, it’s Charlie who voices the thought in all four of their minds.

The contraption is oddly cylindrical in shape, polished aluminum in places, rusty steel panels the rest. It’s composed of superimposed, flattened rings, all the same diameter and holed in the center – empty but for a blinking blue light coming from its base.

“I think,” Peter says, approaching, “it might be some sort of generator…you know, like those old things refineries used to keep as backup in case the power went out, way back before we got into the clean energies treaty. Some office buildings had them too, if I remember correctly.” He’s seen the pictures and diagrams, if not the devices themselves.

“Sorry, never heard of ‘em, boss.”

 “ _If_ it’s a power source, it could be what’s causing the breach,” Lincoln suggests.

Peter nods his agreement, guessing it makes as much sense as anything else, “and,” he says as the idea strikes him, “following that thought, there’s a chance the universe will plug the hole on it’s own if we shut it down.”

“Ok, so can you do it?” Liv asks, alive with that nervous energy that never seems to disperse from her shape.

Peter huffs, already crouching down to inspect it; “you do realize you’re talking to me, right?”

She just rolls her eyes.

“Think you can manage it in less than three minutes?” Lincoln asks, “I really don’t want to leave Wash to my sister.” _Washington,_ Peter remembers, is Lincoln’s four-year-old Golden Retriever, a birthday gift and a joke. The only thing he brought over from Seattle after his transfer, close to three years ago.

“I can try,” He shrugs.

He’s being modest. There has never been a single electronic device that he has not been able to take apart by hand. It’s as easy as breathing. He knows of circuits and diodes, transistors and wires. He speaks their language, understands. Machines are simple, uncomplicated. Machines cannot _feel_ , and thus nothing hurts them.

“Well then, I’ll go talk to the people outside; someone might have seen something,” Red says. She’s already retreating by the time Peter looks up to nod his response.

Through it all, the droning, mechanized voice keeps a warning in the air, of imminent failure and death.

_WARNING: QUARANTINE PROTOCOL. INITIATED. MASSIVE LOSS OF LIFE IN: 2. MINUTES._

 ***

 

“You alright down there, Bishop?” he hears Charlie ask down from the mezzanine.

“Just thinking about that sister of yours that Lincoln keeps talking about,” he forces a smile into his tone, “at this rate I might find myself in that strip club of hers to see what he’s talking about.”

“Forget I ever asked, you looked prettier with your mouth closed _._ ”

“And now you’re just jealous of my rugged man-beauty,” he retorts, carefully removing millimetric screws one by one and dropping them into the container Lincoln’s been holding up.

“No, no, I do believe he has a point,” Liv interjects, coming back into the opera house, “those little pouty lips of your look way better without your teeth in the way.”

“Why, Agent Dunham, I always did suspect you had the hots for me, but I never thought it ran this _deep,_ ” Peter smirks, raising his head from the floorboards to take a closer look at the seemingly endless mass of copper wire he’s uncovered, tangled beneath the metallic panels of the generator’s underside section.  He misses her response, baffled.

It’s been a while since Peter’s seen something like this. It reminds him of junkyard hunting as a teen, when he used to open up busted LED TV screens and car radios in search of spare parts for one project or the other, always returning home – greasy and scraped here and there – to Elizabeth’s fuss.

Not just old tech, this thing. Archaic is more like it.

“Oh, I can already imagine what Frank’s gonna say about that,” he hears Lincoln tease beside him.

 _“Frank_ ,” Liv defends, “is gonna say that I know that he knows I’m only with him because he can actually cook without burning my kitchen.” 

“When have I ever been in your kitchen?” Peter replies, moving his head into the light to make his indignation clear.

“Oh, right,” she blinks, ”that’s usually me.”

_WARNING: QUARANTINE PROTOCOL. INITIATED. MASSIVE LOSS OF LIFE IN: 50. SECONDS._

 “Time’s running, Cap,” Lincoln says.

“I know, I know,” he says, finally finding the particular weld he’s been looking for all this while “Just…a few…more,” he yanks down hard, and it’s done, “seconds.”

The blinking blue light goes still. Lincoln notifies HQ on his earcuff, awaits further instruction.

Seconds pass, stretching like hours on end. Peter keeps counting down, in his mind. There’s not much time left.

“We’re clear!” Lincoln says then and it’s like he’s put breath back into his lungs, “pick up all canisters, put them back under lock!” he pushes down on the potentiator and the droning voice disappears, mid-sentence.

“You heard him, people,” Charlie shouts, “move out, move out!”

Peter sighs in relief, lets his head fall back with a thump on the carpeted ground before rolling away and standing himself. Drops of sweat run down his back, one by one. He’s liable to sleep in the tub tonight, if he ever gets home, water rations be damned.

“Good call, Stinky,” Liv says with a smile, patting his chest as she moves to help Charlie finish inspecting the site.

 

***  

 

Row upon row of seats covered in cardinal velvet spread before him as he walks between them, watching, pacing what’s left of the adrenaline away from tired limbs and overtaxed nerves. Looking for anything that might tell them what the hell happened, why there, why then. Protocol dictates inspection, though reason tells him there is nothing to find. These are natural events, frays in the net that holds the world together, unpredictable, uncontrollable, their ability to lessen the damage mediocre at best in the most optimistic of scenarios. And yet…

Peter’s hands shake, now that their lives do not depend on their precision.

“So, did first responders see anything?” Lincoln asks, crouching down to peak under the seats.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Liv replies from above, where she’s busied herself by helping Charlie, “y’know, the blue flashes, the dogs barking, the usual.” 

“Hmmm…”

“What?” Peter asks.

“Dunno, it’s just…something feels off,” Lincoln looks back at the stage, “Would that generator thing really have enough power to open up a hole in the universe?”

“No, not remotely, barely enough to keep it open.” Realization downs, in a flash, “You think someone did this.” It’s a statement, not a question. Peter squats.

“Well, it’s a possibility I’m considering. I mean, you said it yourself, that thing is antiquated, why would anyone have one, let alone want one, unless – “

“Unless they wanted an energy source so outdated that it’s outside government regulation.” Peter cuts him off, his mind thriving on possibility, theory, conjecture.

“Exactly,” Lincoln says, “but then, how did they open the rift? The amount of energy needed to do something like that has gotta leave an energy signature _somewhere_ , and the readings were all within normal parameters for a level three.”

“And why _here_ of all places?” Peter stands, looks up, restless in his skin. The theatre is a work of art in itself, if a little too ostentatious for Peter’s more subdued taste. Cardinal red dominates the place, covering seats and rugs and curtains, drawing the eye to the white marble of columns and statues and the walls they stand between, walls saturated with riddles of gold-leaf that weave upwards and into the crystal dome at the center of the ceiling, a modern representation of the oculus.

“Do we have a list of the people evacuated?” Peter asks.

“I think Red has it, why?”

“I’m thinking whomever did this, _if_ someone did this, might have been hoping to get someone specific. Not everybody can afford places like this.” 

It was one of the things Elizabeth missed most, after the divorce. After Walter’s lawyers reduced them to a single bedroom apartment and a supermarket job. Peter knows this, not because his mother told him – she would never admit to a lack of anything that Peter himself did not need – but because he’d noticed the longing in her eyes whenever she’d find a retransmission on TV. Her favorites were always German plays, tragedies all, that she could recite word for word from memory alone. Her love for theatre and poetry had always been a defining aspect of Peter’s childhood.

He remembers the opera soundtrack of her laundry afternoons every weekend, when he’d find her singing along in a powerful mezzo soprano as he came back from a long day at the workshop, covered in engine grease from head to toe. It had taken him a long time to convince her to let him work half time, let him help however he could. Her pride had always been in the way. He’d come close to falsifying her signature on the parental permission he’d needed to be hired more than once, at sixteen. 

“That would make sense,” Lincoln nods, “politicians do love their theatre don’t they?”

“Helps them practice for everyday life, I suppose.”

Lincoln snorts, “Yeah. My family used to come here a lot when we lived in the city, before,” he mutters, “…It was torture.”

“You poor little rich kid.”

“Oh, do shut up, Captain.”

He laughs. 

Lincoln’s the son of a judge, an important one. He’s led the life Peter might have had, had he been gifted with a decent human being for a father. Instead, the fates had put him up with Walter Bishop, Secretary of Defense, myopic bastard extraordinaire. 

“You boys find anything down there?” Red interrupts. She leans over the balcony, Charlie supporting his weight on his elbows at her side.

“Zilch, you?” Lincoln says. 

“Same. It’s a dead end.”

Peter sighs, “In that case, there’s no point in us being here any longer. Let’s move out.”

“Aye, aye, Captain!”

 

***

 

It happens faster than a thought.

Peter catches a glimpse of gold out the corner of his eye as he moves out of the building, towards the transport that will carry them back to HQ for debrief. Peter is distracted, chemically exhausted. The golden glint barely registers, his frazzled mind attributing it to a left over from the inside of the theatre, a retarded signal in his retinas, the kind of image that might appear when turning too fast in the light.

He’s not the only one who sees.

“Hey! Stop!” It’s Liv shouting, moving, gun drawn as she chases what appears to be another woman down the alley.

(What Peter thought he didn’t see, he realizes, was their perpetrator leaving the building through a backdoor. What Peter thought he didn’t see, he realizes, was the answer to his every question.)

The sudden flurry of motion kick starts all his hard engrained instincts into action, dispels his bone-deep weariness by shooting a cocktail of chemicals through his blood, tensing his muscles, accelerating his heartbeat. He runs.

“Move!” he bellows at unsuspecting civilians, “Out of the way, Fringe Division!”

He follows Lincoln as he sprints on a path running in a tangent to the one Liv and Charlie have taken, cutting through back allies, trying to intercept the suspect from the side instead of taking a chance at the possibility of being outrun and unable to help. It’s a strategy born out of instinct and familiarity, the kind of procedure only performed as efficiently by the well-oiled machinery of mechanical clocks, now long gone in favor of the digital age.

It works. Well, almost.

Lincoln stops abruptly as he turns the curve, gun in hand, and Peter sees, looking ahead, that he’s got both women in sight. Charlie must have fallen behind. Peter keeps running.

There’s a final warning, a loud “Stop!” bellowed behind him, and then the discharge of a gun ringing in the air. 

The shot hits its target, predictably off-center, and the blonde stumbles. He sees her clutch at her shoulder, sees her stagger forward with added momentum, but she does not fall. Lincoln is no marksman. He knows Liv would have aimed for her legs.

Against all expectation, the woman keeps running. Her movements are jagged, more determined than graceful, and yet she keeps on trying to put distance between them with an unswerving persistence the likes of which he’s rarely been witness to.

Peter almost admires the tenacity.

 

***

 

Olivia runs. 

It feels as if she’s been running all her life. Rushing, stumbling, dragging infinite weights from one place to the next. It doesn’t matter where she’s going. It doesn’t matter what she’s running from. Olivia runs.

Her lungs heave, her legs burn. There’s a fire blazing on her shoulder, where the bullet still lies, lodged between muscles and grinding on bone. It digs deeper with every step, every small movement of her now limp arm at her side. Red-hot blood runs down her ribcage, turns the gray of her shirt into midnight black under her jacket to the beat of her heart beneath the flesh of her chest. It traces scorching paths down her biceps, all the way to the tips of fingers that will not stop shaking. Fingers that make the Glock 26 strapped to the side of her hip irrelevant in light of their uselessness. She has no aim whatsoever when shooting left-handed. 

She’s not going to be able to keep this up much longer, not when the terrain is unfamiliar. Not when her only contact whatsoever, an aging scientist who might just be the missing half of the two variable equation responsible for her every misfortune, lies in wait on the other side of Manhattan Island. If they even call it that on this side. Olivia has been to New York plenty of times, has wandered its streets more than once. But though it feels familiar in the same way the reflection in her mirror does, this is not her New York. No, this is something else, something else entirely.

They’re gaining ground on her. Only two of them remain, running behind her, though not as far behind as she’d like. She feels the thumping of their steps on the pavement, hears only her own blood rushing in her ears, her lungs burning down what oxygen they find as she makes her way through the intermittent river of civilians walking to and fro. 

A nauseating feeling overwhelms her, of extreme awareness and vulnerability, her every sense in overdrive as she follows twists and turns in an effort to outrun them. 

It’s getting harder to breathe, and the sensation itself is unfamiliar. It’s not the shortness of breath that comes with agitation, or physical exertion, much more reminiscent of altitude sickness or the moments before drowning, like there is not enough air around for her to inhale.

It feels different, this place. And maybe it’s merely psychological, a burden of the knowledge that this is not her world, not the niche in space-time continuum that she has made her own through years of hardships and struggles, but there’s no denying the molecular dissonance vibrating beneath her skin, itching on the space between her shoulder blades even in flight. She’s not welcome.

A green backdoor swings open, not that far ahead. A balding man bringing the trash out, it seems. 

Her vision blurs around the edges, the world fades, her head pounds, her shoulder aches.

Olivia runs.

 

***

 

They’d split ways as they entered the building. 

In retrospect, Peter thinks, it might not have been the wisest decision. A set of winding basement corridors stretches before him, walls split halfway between bottle green and the purest of whites; white that reflects the overhead lights brightly enough to make his eyes hurt, and his jaw clench.

He can’t imagine a logical reason for their perp to come down here in hopes of escaping them; there is nowhere to hide. There is nothing but empty aisles and the disquieting feeling that comes with this eerie resemblance to a hospital ambience: the sterilized smell, the artificial lack of humidity in the air, the colorless surroundings. 

Whomever it is that they’re dealing with, sanity has long been out of the question. Only fanatics and utter lunatics (not that there’s much difference) would think of using a rupture in the fabric of cosmos as the means for a statement. The former would’ve claimed responsibility, the latter…well, the latter is probably somewhere in this building, bleeding to death one drop at a time, and is not leaving any time soon without an armed escort. 

The air shaft rumbles above him, chromed panels and laser - cut rents shuddering as it settles into a low whirring that vibrates in his chest as he trots ahead, scanning the place as he goes. There is no other sound but the echo of his footfalls against the rough concrete floor, the pounding of his heart beneath his ribs, the continuous rush of pressurized blood in his ears. The silence unsettles him. 

There is a stain on the wall. It catches his eye as he turns a corner to his right. Peter slows his pace; he has no intention of going back to Fringe Medical today, and he’d made note of the gun strapped to the woman’s hip as she ran. He may not be the most cautious man out there, and he has a certain dislike and healthy disregard for rules as a whole, a sealed record that’s not as clean as his partners expect, but he’s never exhibited a lack in the ‘survival instincts’ department. He’s very much alive thanks to them, and would be content to remain so.

Further ahead the smudge becomes a trail of bloody fingerprints on stark white walls, and Peter wonders how in hell this woman is still standing with the amount of blood that’s been misplaced.

Peter follows.

 

***

 

 _There is only so much blood the human body can lose before ceasing to function, dear_ , an approximation of Walter’s voice says in the back of her mind, the utterance accompanied by the white flashes that cover the margins of her vision intermittently as she continues to run – jog would be more appropriate a word, now – down the twisting corridors of _whereversheis_.

Instinct has carried her here; logic has kept her on track. Trying to run across the main floor of what appeared to be some sort of factory would have been ludicrous, if not completely suicidal. Going up the stairs would have slowed her down, made her easy to catch, easier still to shoot down. She’s not too keen on the idea of jumping off a roof into the East River either. Olivia’s not so sure heading for the basement level will end up being any better, but there’s nothing to do for that now. 

Having worked closely with Walter Bishop for the past year has given Olivia a degree of experience with psychedelics that she never bargained for. She’s reminded of this now because strangely enough, bleeding out feels much closer to a Ketamine-Neurontin-LSD high than she would’ve thought. Plus the pain, which is constant and merciless and might easily be the only thing keeping her on her feet. 

She’s been dosed once or twice (the second time would’ve killed her, had it not been for Astrid’s unprecedented speed with a syringe), though she barely remembers anything besides the emotional chaos, and the lead she’d gone under to obtain. She remembers ghostly pallor, greasy dark hair, thin lips on a cruel mouth. A cellphone beeping. An explosion. She remembers panic and despair and having no time, no time at all. She remembers John. John, and all the things she’s lost, things she can’t let herself dwell upon.

This is her life now, an endless race against tireless opponents, down empty corridors in infinite mazes. Looking for answers to questions she doesn’t know, questions she’s never asked. A nightmare that spirals on and on and lies waiting in the shadows of the bleak landscape that comprises the backdrop of her mind (she can’t wake up).

Olivia stumbles over her own feet. She braces herself against the wall, the one hand she can still rely on dragging behind her as she pushes on ahead. She’s dimly aware, on some level, that she’s going to have to find a way to stanch the regular flow of blood down her arm if she hopes to live long enough to escape her persecutors. If she hopes to live long enough to do what she came for.

A dizzy mockery of a smile graces her face, pale and washed out like the rest of her, stained with the bitterness of memory, and the deaths on her hands. To have thought, not hours ago, that getting here would be the most difficult part. 

She’s failed. 

The thought is but a flash, a momentary spark in the darkness, in those few seconds of consciousness before all else fails. It is but a flash, but it engulfs a lifetime. She’s failed, and she has not even started. At least no one will miss her; that is her only consolation. Perhaps Rachel would have, in another life. Ella will, for a while, until all memories of childhood fade (if the universe holds long enough).

Olivia feels the world drop beneath her feet, her vision tilts, blurs, disappears.

She feels nothing more. 

 

***

 

Peter watches her body plummet to the ground. He hears the heavy thump as her shape connects with the hard concrete beneath his feet, the dry smack of her skull against the uneven surface ringing in the silence, echoing until he feels it all the way up from his toes to the base of his spine, like thunderstorms in early spring or an especially powerful bass. 

It’s not all at once. She falls to her knees first, her legs giving beneath her, like someone’s hamstrung her when he wasn’t looking, and she seems for a moment at peace (she could’ve passed for being in deep meditation, in prayer perhaps, had he not known better than that). Her body sags sideways then, her shoulder and cranium hitting hard against unpolished cement, and all illusion of something other than death fades. 

“I need Med Evac at my location, _NOW_ ,” he barks into his cuff. Whoever she is, whatever she’s done, she’s no use to them as a corpse. Peter wants answers, and he’ll make damned sure to get them. 

He holsters his gun and rapidly approaches, squinting against the harsh lighting as he crouches to inspect the now immobile body before him, praying for her to breathe still.

But Peter is not prepared for what he sees next. _“…Liv?”_


	3. Misplaced

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to un-canadien-errant and Chichuri for the beta and unwavering encouragement. They make it suck so much less.

_Department of Defense, Liberty Island._

 

“I’m afraid there are many things that have been kept from you, Agents.”

Walter Bishop makes a striking figure against the backdrop of the New York City skyline, with his perfectly combed silver hair and impeccable Italian suit, his very presence speaking of power. He has always carried himself regally, forever a king on a scientist’s throne. 

Peter snorts. He says, “Why does that not surprise me,” _sotto voce_ , and is met only with Liv’s frown and Lincoln’s badly disguised smile. It’s never been a secret between them, Peter’s dislike for the man who has not been his family in any way but blood for a long time. The Secretary ignores him, of course.

“How so, sir?” Lincoln asks.

“I assume, Agent Lee, that you all remember my book, _Z.F.T._?”

“Of course, sir.” It’s Liv who answers.

“You remember the premise then, I presume.”

“You claimed that the degradation of our universe is our own fault, that the first tears in cosmic fabric happened as a result of our meddling with the order of natural events, and that those tears set in motion a chain reaction of similar incidents that we will continue to experience until we find a way to stop them in their entirety or - ” Lincoln pauses, swallows, “or they become too much for us to contain.”

“Very good, Agent.” The Secretary nods his approval, looking thoughtfully at the book in his hands. Peter must have missed him grabbing it from the shelf at his side. He doesn’t miss the rueful twist of his mouth, or the clenching of his jaw, the stiffening of his fingers as his back straightens. 

“It’s all a lie, isn’t it?” he asks, a mirthless laugh caught in his throat. Peter’s very good at calling a bluff, especially from a face he knows as well as his own.  

“Yes, it’s a lie, son.” 

Peter flinches. He’ll tell himself, later, that it had nothing to do with being called ‘son’. His teammates stare ahead, unblinking. In shock, if he were to hazard a guess. Peter can’t say he’s surprised, doubts he’ll ever be surprised again, after holding an unconscious copy of Olivia Dunham earlier in the day as she bled out (he can still feel the blood on his hands, though he washed it away as soon as was possible, scrubbing up to his elbows for thoroughness’ sake). And he’s most certainly not surprised at being informed that his father is a professional liar—he’s known that for decades now.

“I would call it more a half-truth, to be accurate, seeing as the only part that is, strictly speaking, a lie, is that these events are natural in any way.”

“Sir, are you suggesting that we have been dealing with terrorist organizations all along?” It’s Liv asking the question.

“After a fashion, I suppose you have, Agent Dunham. What would you say if I told you that those tears you have been sealing away are more than just holes in the fabric of the universe?”

“What else could they be, sir?” Liv again. He briefly notes the distress in her tone. She’s never liked being left out.

“Doors,” Peter says, breathless under the weight of his own implications. It’s a half-formed thought, a nascent idea. “All this time, we’ve been shutting doors.”

“Doors _where_?” Liv asks, bewildered.

“Another one,” Lincoln says, picking up on the direction his thoughts have taken. They’ve always worked well together. “Another universe,” he clarifies, and Peter knows it’s more for Liv’s benefit than anything else.

Red simply stares, gaze shifting between the two of them, and he can feel the thoughts behind that stare like living, breathing things, judging silently, asking: _how the hell did you two come up with that?_

Walter Bishop, Secretary of Defense, claps. There is a smile on his face. It’s a regular smile, to the untrained eye. To Peter, it’s more menacing than amicable, stiff and uncomfortable—Walter never did like to lose, and knowledge is power. The twelve-year-old stuck in the back of his skull can’t help but give a gleeful reminder: chimpanzees too, smile to threaten. He’s pretty sure he read that somewhere. He purses his lips and focuses on looking suitably grim. 

“Impressive. It is no wonder Philip holds this team in such high regard. I’ll have to commend him on his choice.”

“So it’s true, then?”  She conveniently forgets to tack on _‘sir’_ at the end. It’s the thing with Liv—you earn respect; titles matter little. And she hates being lied to.

“Indeed, Agent Dunham, your colleagues are right. Please, sit down.”

 

***

 

Green eyes blink open, bloodshot, frenzied.

 The monitors beep in a furious staccato, increasing, increasing. The woman on the bed sits up, blonde hair framing her face, deathly pale. Hospital white floods her vision. She notices the handcuffs, tugs at them but they won’t give. She tugs harder. Looks around without seeing, breathes much too fast. Needs to get out, get away. The monitors flash red, green, red-red-red-green, urgent. She hears steps, voices, coming close, closer. Glass breaking, a horn blaring, shouting, somewhere, not there. The rustle of cloth on cloth, cloth on skin, skin on skin. Dust settling on the window sill. Classical— _Figaro_ , maybe. Disjointed, all at once. Loud.

Hands push her down. She protests, kicks and screams. She pleads _let me go;_ she thinks _no, please no,_ or _you don’t understand_ , maybe both. A sting on the crook of her arm, cold needle.

A familiar face, weathered, black hair slicked back, gelled. Black eyes, kind. The same, yet not. A scar. She says: “Charlie. Charlie. Please.” She stops straining, her body goes slack.

Green eyes close, drowsy, pupils blown wide.

 

*** 

 

Charlie Francis leans back into the worn red-tinted leather of the booth, rubbing at his eyes with a fist. “You’re not kidding are you?”

Lincoln rolls the bottom edge of his beer against the table. “Nope.”

“Parallel universes. Shit. Well, at least it makes sense.”

“Agent Francis, I never thought I’d see the day.” Lincoln takes a heavy swallow, smiles, surprised. His voice is almost drowned by the cheering of the patrons sitting around the big screen at the end of the bar. He suspects a goal on the ice but resists looking back, doesn’t want to see the Metropolitans lose one more time. 

“Not talking about your precious science, Lee.” Charlie downs his shot, grimacing. “It explains how she knows me.”

“She, who?”

“The… woman we caught. She _knew_ me, Lincoln. She grabbed my jacket and said _‘Charlie, please_ ’.”

A waitress approaches, young, pretty; college student maybe. Lincoln smiles, dazzling, and points at their drinks. There’s no point in trying to shout above the noise, and they’ll need a refill soon. When she nods and turns back towards the bar, he frowns. 

“So you’re saying,” Lincoln says, “because she’s Liv’s doppelgänger, she must know _your_ doppelgänger? I’m pretty sure there’s a couple holes in your logic there.”

Charlie shrugs. “I dunno, it’s possible. I mean, do you have any other explanation?”

“Mind reading?” He looks much more excited than the prospect should imply.

“I get the feeling you mean that.”

“Well, _parallel universes_ , man.”

“Yeah, pretty much. What’d Liv say? And where’s Captain?”

“Captain’s off to sleep and possibly shower, not necessarily in that order. Liv’s at the docking station, Frank came back early from Texas.” Lincoln shifts in his seat. He’s uncomfortable, and it has nothing to do with the thought of Frank being back. 

“What are you not telling me?” Charlie asks. He’s tired, they all are, but omitting information has never been Lincoln’s style. He scratches at the most recent scab on the crook of his left arm, superficial, circular. The only thing keeping him from being eaten from the inside out.

“Nothing, it’s just…you didn’t see her face. She looked…not spooked, but hell, it was pretty damn close.”

“I doubt you’d look your usual smug self if you’d seen your evil twin from another universe, Lee, cut her some slack.”

“I suppose. We could bet on that, but I’m not sure we’d ever get it settled.”

“I’d win anyway.” Lincoln rolls his eyes. Charlie says, “Hey, it’s Liv, she’s gonna be fine.”

Lincoln raises a glass to that.

 

***

 

“Thanks for the ride, Higgins.” Peter shuts the cab’s door, steps on the sidewalk, sleep-drunk. It’s a good thing Red insisted on keeping his car keys. 

“Anytime, bro, anytime. Gotta look out for my friends. Hey, you should come over to Mike’s next week, get a beer with the boys, we’re havin’ a barbecue out back. ” He hasn’t been to Mike’s in years, doesn’t think of ever going back.

“Nah, you know I don’t do that anymore, man. Neither should you for that matter.” Henry used to be his runner of choice, once upon a time.

“Oh, I ain’t, Bishop, believe me. I’m clean as can be, just keeping things friendly with the old group is all.”

“Good, ‘cause I’m not playing dumb next time you get busted. Say hi to Jasmine for me.”

“Will do,” Henry says, mock salutes and drives off.

It’s drizzling out. He’s cold, shivering. Hungry. Peter runs a hand through his hair, climbs up the steps and into the building. He’s wired, wide awake and shaky, bone-tired. He lets himself in, closes the door and throws his coat on the rack, his keys on the table, places his cuff on its base and pushes the red voicemail pop-up on the screen. As he unlaces his boots, he listens.

His mother speaks first. ‘Peter, darling, you still haven’t called. Is something the matter? I hope work is going well.’ Rufus barks in the background. The message comes to a stop, short and to the point, and Peter curses under his breath. He’d promised to call back a week ago, when he’d been preempted from visiting by work for the third time in as many months. He tries to see her often, if only for lunch on the weekends, knows she gets lonely without him. 

The recording goes on. Advertising, mostly; junk he shouldn’t even bother to listen to. He drops his belt on the couch, makes his way to the kitchen, turning on the lights as he goes. The floorboards are cold beneath his bare feet, socks long discarded.

Peter opens the fridge, finds it halfway to empty and thinks, this will not do. Grabs a beer, pops it open, takes a swallow. 

Another message comes on. “Hey, uh, this is Jenna, from O’Malley’s? Marty gave me your number. You left without saying anything the other day, and I thought we could catch up, spend some time together. Call me!” A beep signals the recording’s end. Peter sighs, presses the cool bottle to the side of his face, scratches at the three-day-old stubble on his jaw. He is going to kill the bartender. 

Early on, he learned that routine is a plus. Going through the motions clears his head, makes the flurry of disparate thoughts that are always there fall into place even as they shift and change, weaving, orbiting around each other in his own little network of interlocked chaos. Like toppling dominos to see their pattern, all it takes is the right push, and patience.

Man was made with a death wish at heart, a propensity for violence and bloodshed. War is inevitable, just a matter of time, that he understands. This, however, this is not a war, but madness.  

What drives someone to end worlds? Is it anger, some misguided faith? More importantly, would the damage ever stop? The multiverse, a theory now proven truth, is a chain reaction after all, of choices made long ago, and maybe this universe is just a fragment of an ever-expanding whole, a micron in space-time so insignificant that its destruction wouldn’t make a difference, but if that’s a possibility then it is logical to assume that the contrary might also be true. That shredding the cosmic walls preventing one universe from disintegrating under natural forces could create a vacuum, a black hole of sorts, where every other universe tangential to its curvature would be dragged down into oblivion. He wonders if they thought of that. If she thought of that. Not that he’d be around to care either way.

As he leans his forehead on the cool tiled wall of the shower, scalding rush of water running down his back, he can’t get the image out of his mind, of her body collapsing, her eyes rolling back, limbs going slack. He’d reacted on instinct, holstering his gun as he moved, dropping to his knees without hesitation because the sight was unbearable: Liv, so full of life, dying there a heartbeat at a time, angry red blood painting the ground at his feet. And he knows now, that she’s not the woman he thought her to be before adrenaline gave way to reason, that she _couldn’t_ be because he’d seen Liv running beside him as he entered the building, red hair flying behind like a standard heralding her arrival, stare focused and sharp as a knife, daring, exhilarated by the chase, breathless. 

Peter knows that now, but he didn’t then, too focused on keeping his hands firmly pressed against her shoulder, her chest, because in that split second after her face registered she wasn’t a suspect, she wasn’t a terrorist, she was a dying friend. He’s already lost too many of them. 

It’s shaken him, to be so easily confused. She’d felt familiar, somehow, beyond her appearance. Like he’d held her hand before. A ridiculous thought, he knows. It doesn’t stop him from thinking it. Mostly, he wants to know _why._

The weariness settles, like he’s flipped a switch. He feels it in the pressure behind his eyeballs as he dries himself, in the flaring aches in muscles long denied their rest. He lacks coherence but his thoughts won’t slow, won’t let him sleep. It’s not the first time. 

A look in the mirror tells him more. It shows a haggard face, bruises under his eyes, heavy eyelids, wrinkles that weren’t there five years ago, scattered stubble so out of control he resembles a castaway more and more. The notion of shaving is briefly entertained, but his hands shake and Peter realizes it would be little more than a suicide attempt. It’ll wait. Or the world will end during the night and it just won’t matter. He very briefly hopes for the latter (all this fruitless anticipation is killing him).

The pill bottle rattles as he opens it. He’s not a fan of drugging himself to sleep any more than he is of drugging himself to stay awake during seventy-two-hour shifts, it’s bound to come around to bite him in the ass if he ever gets past forty, but it’s become a professional hazard. If he doesn’t sleep he can’t do his job, and if he doesn’t do his job…well. He stares at the little round disc in the palm of his hand, pale blue and seemingly harmless. Sighs. He’s had far worse than Valium anyhow. He gulps it down with the water pouring down the faucet and it’s an interesting mix, the bitter taste of recycled water—and really, there’s no telling where that water might have been. He could as well be swallowing someone else’s chlorine treated piss—against the chemical sweetness of diazepam pills.

 

***

 

“So. All we’ve done is talk about how awful Texas is, which, really, we’d already agreed on.” Frank hugs her from behind as she pours his drink, Chinese take out steaming beside her on the table top. “How was work?”

Liv sets the bottle of shiraz down, turns around in his arms. She makes herself smile. “Weird. Tiresome. Classified.” _Revealing_.

He understands, does a great job masking disappointment. “Ah, same old, same old.” 

“Yep.” She bites her lip, switching her weight from foot to foot as she throws her arms around his neck. She thinks: you have no idea. The smile doesn’t falter.

“Heard Fringe Division had to amber a state school yesterday. The report was all over the news. Was that you?”

“Mhm. Early this morning actually, _very_ early. Had to kick Peter out the window, jumped right behind him.”

Frank pushes her hair away from her neck, onto her shoulder, cradling her nape. “But you’re sure you’re ok?”

“I may have pulled something. In my back.” She waggles her eyebrows at him, makes him chuckle.

“I’ll give you a back rub later, if you want.”

 “Yes, please.” She hums in contentment. She likes this, the air of domesticity, the uncomplicated, no-questions-asked rhythm they got going on from the very beginning. It’s easy. Frank is charming in a standard-issue, quiet, strong-but-gentle sort of way. Liv’s not exactly an every-man’s gun, and she’s not gentle either. She finds they mesh, fit together well, that perhaps there’s some truth to the old rule of opposites attracting. “Tell me there’s hot water left?”

“There’s hot water left.” 

 “Didn’t your mother teach you manners as a kid?”

“There’s hot water left, _ma’am_.”

She slaps his chest, smiles. “I’m being serious here.”

“Olivia Dunham, serious? In what universe is that?”

Liv swallows, looks away for a fraction of a second, hopes he doesn’t notice the anxious twist to her widening smile. She shrugs. “Somewhere boring, probably.” 

_I’m about to find out._

***

 

The second time Olivia Dunham wakes in a strange place in a universe not her own is entirely at odds with the first. There is a distinct lack of beeping, for one, and the cell —she can tell it’s a cell just by the wall at her back and the length of her cot—is pitch black. The incessant banging in her eardrums is gone and she can hear nothing but the sound of her own breathing, her heart beating. She’s been forced into a jump suit while she was unconscious, thick, stiff cloth scratchy against the crease of her elbows, the bend of her knees. 

The air is dry, clean, and it’s a strange thing to notice but Olivia’s been on the inside of prisons before in capacities other than these (always the captor), and though she’s seen far stranger things since, she doesn’t remember it being this way. Prison air is heavy, oppressing, dense with the acrid smell of old sweat that settles at the back of the throat, vibrating with misery and violence, that speaks of wasted years and failed humanity. No, it’s not a prison cell. More an observation room if she had to guess. 

Olivia spent her childhood under a scientist’s thumb, and some things they didn’t erase quite as well as the rest. The brain might be plastic, as malleable as melting glass, but some things stay, indelible. There is always a trace, a clue pointing to some direction in space, be it a number, a date, even words themselves. She knows the feeling, of being watched day and night without respite. She can feel the crosshairs on her back like a white-hot brand.

There’s a migraine forming, marginally held back by the lack of light, of the kind Olivia has only briefly and very recently experienced. It usually means drugs of the basement-engineered, illegal kind, but she guesses it could also be attributed to equine sedatives and the like. It’s a rough trip either way. 

She rubs at the ache on the back of her neck with steady hands. The bullet wound that took her down is now a little scar, not even puckered, smooth and smarting slightly under her probing touch. More medically advanced: check. She’s not afraid of the dark. She’s not afraid of anything really. It’s her greatest failure so far.

But that’s wrong, she supposes. It’s not that she fears nothing. Walter would say that to be entirely unafraid is improbable (she’s learned _impossible_ is largely a waste of dictionary space), that it’s more likely she’s channelled that fear into something else, that she lacks the right stimuli. He’s said it before, with a tremor in his voice, a nervous tick making his left hand flutter on its own with the help of his somewhat degraded neural responses. Olivia’s never had it in her to absolve him of the guilt, recognizes, even, that part of her wants him to feel it — a vicious, hurtful, bloodied part at that. The truth, without embellishment, is this: Olivia’s angry. She’s been angry for a good long while. 

It’s easy to forget Walter is human as well, with his boundless knowledge and a disposition that’s larger than life. They don’t have the greatest rapport: he is broken and helpless, and then arrogant, irascible and cold by turns. Despite it, perhaps even because of it, pain and guilt are two things Olivia’s long been intimate with. She understands. It brings them closer, at times.

It’s not that she fears nothing, it’s that she’s _terrified_ of a great many things. The end of the world and not being able to stop it, just to start with. She’s supposed to be made for that, to prevent this war, and failing that, to fight until she no longer can. Walter’s right in any case, just as he always is: simple fear isn’t enough. Not anymore. 

The problem remains—without Bell, without maybe an overdose and a panic attack, she’s more than just stuck here in Wonderland. Her being captive is a potential disaster waiting to happen, a weapon delivered to parties unknown, their intentions a mystery. 

How long has she been here? In the darkness, time matters little. 

 

***

 

Peter comes into the room gulping down his third cup of tea in the last hour, because he’s a reluctant addict afraid of falling over his own feet, and if public service has taught him one thing it’s _when in doubt, add caffeine_. He mutters a half-hearted greeting and kicks the door shut with an audible click. He doesn’t really look any better, with a marginal eight hours sleep, but at least he smells (and feels) clean.

Red, perched on the table, legs swaying gently like branches of trees newly planted in an early autumn breeze, turns to watch him with a raised eyebrow, surprised. “What are you doing here?” she asks, abrasive.

“Nice to see you too, Sweetcakes,” he retorts with all the cheap, sticky charm he can muster.

She groans. “Is there any way to fake an IQ test? Say yes,” she says, looking at Lincoln, who’s propped up at her side with the table’s edge digging a canal across his ass, ankles crossed. 

“Yeah, why not.” Lincoln shrugs, returning the greeting with a two-finger salute. “Would probably take a genius though.”

The answering eye-roll is equal parts exasperated and fond. “At least you got a loyal boyfriend, Cap.” 

“I pay him,” Peter says.

“So that’s your secret,” she replies dryly. “Good to know.”

“Why, you wanna borrow him?” 

“Hmm, maybe. He _is_ unbearably pretty.”

“I take credit cards and pre-authorized cheques only,” Lincoln says, grinning. 

“He lies,” Peter says with a straight face, “there’s a red g-string full of green filthy bills in his sock drawer.”

“You keep talkin’ Bishop, and I’m never giving you a discount again.”

“Oh, I’m so glad Broyles insisted on taping this.” Liv smirks. “I can already see it: “Fringe Agents: Uncensored. The true face of the world’s best.”

Lincoln makes a choking noise and Peter coughs, looks at her, sees her staring at the small red, blinking dot in the corner by the mirror, pursing her lips as she tries not to laugh. “I hate you,” he mouths.

“So, wait. What _are_ you doing here? I thought it was your day off,” Lincoln interjects when he’s composed himself, before Liv stops laughing long enough to form the words to accompany the wicked twist of her lips. 

“Yeah, so did I.” Peter shrugs. “Broyles called, said he wanted my eyes on this.” He slumps down on the hard metal chair with as much grace as he can manage. “So. How’s it going?”

“Uh, it isn’t, yet. Charlie just got in.” Liv answers, snapping back to business, motioning for them to look at the scene playing out on the other side of the one-way mirror.

“And, for the record, I’m way classier than that,” Lincoln deadpans. “It’s black.”

 

***

 

_Suspect: Dunham, Olivia (b)_

_Interview 1_

 

“Listen, Olivia—Is it alright if I call you Olivia?” Charlie Francis says, voice calm, almost kind, waiting for her acquiescence before continuing, “We know where you’re from, so why don’t you make this easier for yourself and let us know why you’re here?”

As far as interrogation openers go, it’s pretty mild. Except this is Charlie sitting right across from her (a different Charlie, granted, one who carries himself like he’s a soldier on tour instead of an ex-cop out of Brooklyn P.D. Who has a scar on his face, and looks at her with a mix of curiosity and apprehension instead of recognition) and Olivia has seen him do this half a hundred times, has seen him crack suspects with a whisper and the right stance. 

She debates with herself. The Charlie she knows is solid, dependable and loyal to boot; he would never intentionally harm her, would never betray her, is one of the few people who doesn’t look at her like she suddenly grew a second head after John’s death. That Charlie isn’t this one, however, and that means that she has no way of knowing what to expect. She still expects him to be steadfast, it’s a part of the man, but allowing for variation means she doesn’t know where his allegiances lie. And if he considers her a threat he’ll do everything he can to make sure that she never sets foot out of a cell again. It’s what she’d do in his place. With silence, at least, it’s hard to err. 

“Look, let me put this another way,” Charlie says, leaning back, “as of yesterday afternoon, you are a prisoner of war. Now, this is not a threat, I’m simply stating the facts so that we understand each other, alright? Here’s the thing: the way I see it, you don’t exactly exist on this side, which means that you have neither records nor citizenship. To sum all of that up, you, Olivia, have no rights. You being treated like a common criminal is a courtesy we’re extending you right now, so any collaboration on your part would benefit all of us. It’s your choice.”

Olivia sighs. “To be honest with you, I’m not sure you’d understand. All I know, is this: I am _not_ your enemy. _My side_ is not your enemy,” she tries, bringing up her cuffed hands to rub at the hollow of her throat under the scratchy collar of the jumpsuit, missing a familiar weight there. They took her mother’s chain from her.

“Well, that’s a little hard to swallow, you’re right,” he says, aiming for a friendlier tone now that he’s gotten her to talk, classic Charlie. “The way you got here doesn’t really back that claim, the way you reacted? If you’re not the enemy, why run?”

“Because you’d never believe me. You still don’t.” 

“And you can tell that why?”

Olivia manages a smile. It’s a little bitter, a little sad. “Because I know I wouldn’t believe me either.”

A suspect is always a mark, an interrogation an exercise in manipulation aimed at one particular outcome: confession. Every person brought into the box is a possible perpetrator, their innocence put in question from the moment their name crops up. There’s no such thing as an honest question.

Charlie seems to consider it. “You said I wouldn’t understand, but you won’t even let me try before making that call. That’s not very fair. I’ll ask you one more time: why are you here, Olivia?”

“Okay, have it your way,” Olivia says, takes a breath. Exhales. “I’m looking for the leader of a terrorist cell responsible for multiple biological attacks, who crossed over from my universe to this one six months ago. His name is David Robert Jones, and if I don’t find him there’s no telling what kind of havoc he might wreak. That’s why I’m here.”

“Let’s say that’s true, then,” Charlie says, after a pause. “Let’s say I believe you. Why you, specifically?”

 “I work in Fringe Division; it’s my job.” She shrugs. 

He purses his lips, then nods. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Olivia, but, at least on this side, protocol is very clear about bringing backup to a manhunt.”

“On mine too.”

He gestures towards her, as if offering some invisible object lying in his upturned palm. “And yet here you are, alone.”

“I’m sorry,” Olivia says, “I’m not sure I heard the question.”

“Why did you come alone, if your intention was to apprehend this… _Jones_ and take him with you? I assume that is your goal, correct? To take him back to your side? Wouldn’t it be better to bring more men? A task force? To tell you the truth, it all seems a little sloppy, a little too convenient.”

“It’s not that simple, Charlie.” Her voice is tense. If he’s startled by her use of his name, he pretends very well.

The cuff-like device around his ear beeps once, then twice. Olivia sees Charlie look at her, then back at the mirror. It beeps a third time. Charlie nods and stands. He leaves the room without preamble, without looking back. 

 

*** 

 

“That went well,” Lincoln remarks, now leaning against the wall, peeking curiously at the blonde behind the glass. 

Too well, Peter thinks, standing as Charlie claps him on the back to say hi. “Better than I expected, yeah,” he admits, “still, she’s hiding something.”

“Um, I believe the appropriate expression is: _well, duh_ ,” Red teases, her voice a little forced, a little tight. She’s distracted, made uncomfortable by the presence of this other version of herself, the threat of her. It’s not every day you meet the person you could have been. Lincoln, not looking, smiles.

“You think she’s lying?” Charlie asks to no one in particular, to all of them, perhaps. 

They’re all staring at her, this other. Peter wonders if she can tell, thinks of the word _xenophobia_ and realizes it was meant for situations like this, where the fear is not of people who look different or hold strange beliefs, but of seeing your reflection stare back at you from across the room with thoughts behind its eyes that you can’t recognize.

“Definitely, but not entirely,” he says, “You know what they say about the best lies.”

“Liv, thoughts?” Lincoln asks.

Red frowns. “I don’t know, I…I don’t know.”

The silence stretches after that, four brains thinking circles around theories, trying to distinguish between truths and lies.

“So you think, what? This Jones guy’s bogus?” Lincoln tries after some time.

Peter crosses his arms across his chest, curves his spine, shifts his hips forward till his weight rests on the balls of his feet. “Maybe, maybe not. Have Astrid make a list of all Fringe events from six months ago, given a thirty day window. See if there’s anything we might have missed, anything that might look suspicious.”

“On it,” Charlie says, nodding, glad to have some tangible task. Turning on his heel, he asks, “Liv, you coming?” 

“Sure,” she says, looking at the window one last time before pushing off the table in one fluid motion, and Peter will never understand the physics at work every time she moves. He’s long given up on trying. 

Lincoln straightens, starts pacing, a pensive look on his face. “It just seems too easy. Why would she come after him? I mean, the guy being in another universe, you’d think she’d be glad to be rid of him and leave it at that, right?”

“Unless it’s personal,” Peter says, staring at blonde Olivia hold on to the back of her neck like her head will fall if she moves her hand away, “Either that or…”

“Or?” Lincoln prods, not really gentle at all.

“Or she’s got a better bluff than all of us put together and we’re seeing this exactly the way she wants.”

“Well, if she’s anything like Liv, I’d bet on that.”

"Yeah." Peter sighs. The better question is, he thinks, how different can they be?

There's something urgent about her hands. He notices it after he stares a while, the only crack in the mask of calm she's worn since they sat her down, bound wrist to wrist, always watched. The motion is repetitive but discontinuous, the same circuit repeating at unpredictable times. Like it's unconscious, almost anxious. It starts at her nape, then follows the shape of her neck down into the collar of a jumpsuit two sizes too big, over the hollow between collarbone and trapezius, coming to rest at the base of her throat, above the sternum, where her fingers pause but a fraction of a second before she stops and drops her hands to her lap. Curious, that. 

A thought strikes a wall, lights a spark. 

What drives someone to end worlds? Is it anger, some misguided faith?

 

***

 

Later, in the evidence bag, among the nondescript clothes and the gun and the smooth leather wallet filled with cards he’s studied one by one (oh so similar, but never the same), he finds a chain; white gold, elegant, slender. Almost delicate. At its end hangs a crucifix, simple, without ornament or pretense. Peter looks at it carefully, studies it. He traces the chain link by link, follows it down to the shape of the cross, glinting between his fingers under fluorescent light. 

God forgot about his universe, left it to rot slowly without looking back, and Peter hasn’t really spared a thought for the idea of him ever since. He believes in what he sees, what he can touch and taste and hear. The idea of a higher power is appealing to some, to those afraid of dying, those too afraid to live. It’s curious: he can’t imagine Liv being either. 

Peter himself remains a skeptic, figures it’s better to be godless than someone else’s puppet.  

What he holds in his hands is a gamble, a bartering chip. Put on those terms, Peter is courting addiction. This once, he won’t resist.


	4. Q & A

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My beta is awesome. Carry on.

Farnsworth anticipates Captain Bishop’s request by a matter of seconds. When he reaches her workstation, his backpack slung over his shoulder, coat hanging over the tense strap and trapped by the wall of his back, at the end of his shift, Farnsworth knows what he is going to ask. She listens anyway, attentive. It is her job to perform if and when it is asked of her to do so, to the best of her ability. Farnsworth understands hierarchy. Moreover, she realizes that most agents find her disturbing, that the abilities she was born with make her different, as anomalous as the things they aim to prevent, only closer to home and with a face that looks a lot like their own. She understands that anomalies of her sort are only celebrated when they can be reconciled with the masses, when the distance between A and B is not so large that resemblance is lost and recognition falters. She understands that it is important to pace herself, to let her superiors direct her on their own terms. Sometimes, appearing somewhat normal is more important than a flawless performance, and normalcy has a loose definition at best. One that shifts by the minute, by the second, like an animal’s moods.

“Hey, Astrid,” he says, the hushed tone of his voice conspiratorial as he leans over her work station, perpendicular to her own position, mindful of her space but still standing closer than anyone else would dare. 

“Captain,” she acknowledges, shifting data into order for the archives and the yearly reviews. Farnsworth likes the captain. His interest in her is baffling. Not unwelcome. He is kind in a way that does not seem patronizing. The sight of her does not seem to offend him. Unlike most, he shows no discomfort at her avoidance of eye contact when he speaks to her (he shares this with Agent Dunham, who taught her to pin her beret in a way that would not give her a headache but would still keep it in place throughout the day; who asks routinely about her father’s condition and makes sure to save her a place at her table on the diner across the street every Thursday, when their lunch hours coincide). 

“Could you compile all the video we got from the interrogation room in the last 72 hours or so, and forward it to my cloud?” he asks. He asks, he does not command. It is somehow important to her, the way he sees her. She does not know why.

Farnsworth nods, her hands tapping away on the smooth surface of her screen, twisting, dragging. “Yes, Captain, of course."  

He does not need to know that she made sure that said files made their way into his personal storage minutes ago. It might make him look at her different, and the possibility makes her sad. 

He nods and he thanks her, and he moves to leave. From the corner of her eye she feels him freeze, turn back around. Unexpected. There is something in his hands that was not there before, his backpack unzipped.

"I almost forgot!” the Captain says, “I thought you might enjoy this.” The thing in his hands is a book, thick and heavy, the pages dog-eared and yellowed, oily from over-handling. _Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals,_ by Richard P. Feynman, the cover reads. Her eyes widen, surprised that he remembered her saying she had been unable to procure a copy from the library, what must be a little over a month ago. With work in the way, her intention to retrieve her reserved copy had fallen by the wayside. 

“It’s been sitting in my locker for ages," he says with a shrug, "looked like it needed some air.  A fresh set of eyes, maybe."

 She looks at him and finds his mouth is grinning and his eyes are too, and the color is clear and blue. Astrid beams.

 

 _***_  

 

_CCTV 47_

_08/17/10 - 9:53:14 AM_

_Suspect: Dunham, Olivia (b)_

_Interviewer: Agent Francis, Charlie_

_Interview no. 4_

 

_"I'm curious," Charlie says, folding himself into the chair across from her in black and white. “The last time we spoke you told me that David Robert Jones crossed over from your side around six months ago, is that right?”_

_“Yes.” The blonde says, her answer clipped, her expression weary, her shoulders tense. Under the table, restless fingers fidget with the too-big jumpsuit, and the cold metal that outlines her wrists._

_"So tell me, if it's so important that you get to him, why wait until now, when the trail’s already cold?”_

_Dunham nods — she expected the question. Her response, however, is hesitant, her reluctance apparent. When she speaks her words are guarded. “I told you, it’s not that simple. Getting here…it’s more complicated than you think.”_

_This gives him pause. “How_ did _you get here, anyways?” Charlie asks, leaning forward on his forearms._

 _He’s met with silence, and it’s enough of an answer for him to know he’s asked_ the _question. All the others, however many, are inconsequential without this piece of information. The woman faces him, features impassive, expression locked down, but it’s not Charlie she stares at. Wherever she is, in that moment, Peter imagines she’s asking herself that same question._

He still wonders if she got her answer.

“What are we missing?” Charlie asks, leaning back on the chair he’s moved around to the edge of Peter’s desk until the springs in the backrest creak dangerously under his weight, his fist tight against his eye. He’s visibly upset, irritated, as frustrated with their situation as they all are. 

Here is the holy grail of preventing the apocalypse, of someday putting more than Band-Aids on the gaping wounds of their dying reality, of restoring balance. Here is the book with all the answers, delivered right into their hands by entities unknown, perhaps sheer happenstance. Except nobody bothered to tell them that the answers would be questions, too, that all they would get from them would be the one thing they’d never want to hear: they can do nothing. 

Peter’d thought he would have gotten used to that long ago. 

He sighs, scratching at the edge of his jaw, where nascent stubble stubbornly refuses to stop itching. “I don’t know. _I don’t know, goddammit._ And how does a perfectly normal looking woman manage to cross into another universe, intact, and then doesn’t know how she did it? She definitely had help. She would’ve needed something to open up some sort of portal, like, a gateway or a wormhole, something that would allow her to —to bridge both realities without the onset of molecular degradation. You get the idea,” he says, gesturing in vain. 

“Well, what kinda something? Like that machine we found?” Charlie asks, frowning. 

“Yes, but bigger. Much, much bigger. That generator would only have enough power to _maybe_ keep the door from closing shut while she crossed, like a doorstop. The raw energy needed to create a portal stable enough that a person can come through unharmed…it’s… theoretically, it’s impossible.”

“So much for theory, lately.”

Peter hums his agreement, says, “You should go back in, see what else you can get out of her.”

“She’s not gonna answer anything else today," Charlie says, "to be honest, we were probably lucky she spoke at all. You should have been there when Liv went in a couple of days ago. It was so bad it was funny. Besides, whoever this chick is, I can guarantee you she’s been trained for this sort of thing. And hell, she _is_ Liv, somewhere out there in another universe — God, I can’t believe I’m saying that — and if I had to bet on anyone keeping their mouth shut in this kind of situation, it would be her.”

“Yeah…hey, is there anything new on this Jones character?”

"Nothing," Charlie says, "The only match to her description that we found used to be a biochem professor in England. Cleanest record I've ever seen. "

"Used to be?" he asks.

"He died in a fire about ten years ago."

"So she made him up? To do what, buy herself time?"

“We’ve had Farnsworth checking traffic camera footage to see if we get a facial match for the last couple of weeks, and nothing’s come out of it, so that's pretty much my theory," Charlie says.

"You should go back in, ask her again."

“Maybe you should talk to her yourself. Seeing a different face might jog her memory some.” 

Peter looks at the ceiling, lets the halogen lights burn in his retinas until the world around him is bleached out of color. The necklace feels heavy and cold where it’s wrapped around his fingers, inside his pocket still; feels like cheating at the poker table, like closing his hand around a hand grenade and wondering where the pin went. His breathing is steady, but his heart pounds. He’s always known obsession to be a dangerous plaything. 

“Maybe I should, yeah,” he says. 

 

*** 

 

“Mister Secretary? Doctor Fayette is here to see you.”

Walter Bishop swivels in his chair to face the woman speaking, the frown on his face giving depth to the lines of his brow and around his eyes, lending his expression a gravitas that has served him well throughout his politicking years. He caps his fountain pen (an expensive little bauble that he’d gotten from his ex-wife for anniversary three, when the things were still more or less in use and computer keyboards had not yet sent the factories the way of the dinosaurs and the sheep) and sets it down. 

“Does he have an appointment I was not made aware of?” Walter asks.

The woman, his aging secretary, shakes her head. “No sir, but he chose to ignore me when I told him, _several times_ , that you were unavailable. He’s right outside.”

Walter sighs. “Very well,” he says, “send him in. And Abigail? Make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Yessir,” she says, her mousy face scrunching up in an unpleasant way before she turns and scurries away. 

His chief scientist enters not a minute later, his usually impeccable suit ruffled, his notepad sticking from one of the pockets of the lab coat he did not remove. His urgency troubles Walter; it usually means it is something either very good or disastrously bad, and, in both cases, thoroughly unexpected. 

“You wanted to see me, Brandon?”

“Yes, Mister Secretary. We’ve had an unexpected development,” Brandon says, his plump face red and still slightly out of breath. Walter, unamused, wonders if the man ran all the way from his lab.

“Is that so?”

“Sir, we may have had a breakthrough on preventing molecular degradation for inter-dimensional travel.”

The Secretary of Defense leans back in his expensive chair, and he smiles.

 

***

 

The chair creaks as Lincoln drops himself at the edge of Peter’s desk, onto the same chair Charlie vacated not that long ago. He’s going to have to take a peek at the springs sometime soon, oil them up, maybe replace them. 

“You have this look on your face,” Lincoln says, gesturing toward the general place of his head. 

“What look?”

“I have no idea, but it looks an awful lot like your dog just died,” Lincoln says, “And since I know you don’t have a dog on the premise that you'd kill any living thing that depended on you for survival: what’s up?”

If only he knew where to start. Peter knows how to wait, he knows how to look. He’s often the smartest guy in the room. Any room, at all times. And yet he can’t explain what he does not understand. His hesitance is as surprising to him as it was to Charlie, as it is to Lincoln now. 

“What’s up is I am really, really thirsty. Are you about done here?”

“Yeah, I just need to go get my stuff, maybe shower. Where’s Charlie anyway?” he asks, “I thought he’d be coming with us.”

“Nah,” Peter says, “he’s got a date, apparently.”

“Don’t tell me, Bug Girl again?” 

“Bug Girl again,” he confirms.

Lincoln laughs, “will wonders never cease.”

“Well, he gets around more than you do these days,” he says. 

Lincoln shrugs, shoots him a look that tells Peter everything he needs to know. Lincoln Lee has plenty of reasons not to put himself out there, however unwise, and they all boil down to _red, red, red._

*** 

 

Brandon Fayette turns the screen in The Secretary’s direction, the results of his tests on display, important bits highlighted in red for his quick perusal. 

“You are sure of this?” The Secretary asks, skeptical.

“I’ve run the tests multiple times sir,” Brandon says, “three, so far. All three were identical.  All the living tissue we have attempted to send over, and subsequently bring back before has had signs of massive molecular degradation, but these cells are in perfect condition. There was no radiation accumulated, no decomposition, even their oxygen levels are relatively normal— what’s more, they seem to regenerate at an accelerated pace once encouraged to divide.”

“Fascinating. And all of these cells came from the woman?”

“Yes, sir. Blood and hair samples were taken in the hospital to ensure that they were optimal, as you requested.”

The Secretary mulls this over for a moment, pacing across the room. After a while, he stops, turns, his hands firmly clasped behind his back.

“Well, Doctor Fayette,” he says, “any hypotheses as to the reason this woman is not yet a puddle of subhuman slime?”

“Not yet, sir, but with your permission, I would like to find out.”

“Permission granted. Initiate experiments when you see fit.”

“Thank you, sir,” the scientist says, barely contained excitement in his posture, his tone.

“And Brandon?” Walter asks, looking over his shoulder, standing at the threshold.

“Sir?” 

“Keep her alive.”

 

***

 

“That your brand of porn or something?” Red’s voice, husky and amused, declaring her arrival.

Peter's eyes flicker up from the screen, see her sliding into the seat right across from him until he feels the toes of her boots knock against his, under the table. She's exchanged her leather jacket for a blue hoodie tonight; a faded blue, soft from washing, insignia indistinct across her chest and too big to not have been Frank’s at some point in (judging from the lack of color and the frayed edges of the sleeves) the distant past. It’s the only indication that she went home at all before coming here. “Hmm?”

“You keep staring at those security feeds like you’re gonna uncover the mysteries of the universe if you look hard enough." She says, moving Lincoln's belongings to the side as she steals his place. "Spill."

“Is Frank away again?” he says, his tone dry. Peter pauses playback on his tablet, placing it so it rests flat on the lacquered surface of the table, screen black. She's got his attention. There’s nothing on the video that he has not already seen half a dozen times (and it’s frustrating).

“Huh? No, he came back last Saturday, what’s that even got to do with anything?”

“You just said the words 'porn', 'hard', and 'spill', all within seconds of each other. Sounds to me like you need to get laid, and I was wondering.” Peter’s always been good at deflection.

“Wow.” Her eyebrows raise beyond the edge of the fringe falling on her forehead, unimpressed. She knows exactly what he’s up to, but then again it’s not like he expected anything different. “Do you even think about anything else?” 

“Nope. All non-sexual thought is prevented by the Y chromosome, didn’t you know?” he retorts.

Red snorts. 

“No kidding,” she says, “I hate you. I hope you know that.”

“You only tell me every day, honeybun.”

“Ok, quit it, Bishop. What’s with the feeds?”

Peter sighs. “I don’t know,” he says, "but she seems a lot like you.” 

“What?”

“The blonde wearing your face. She seems to be a lot like you. Acts like you, kind of talks like you, moves like you.”

Red grimaces, leans back, doesn't like the comparison. “Yeah, if I had a pole up my ass, and had an inclination for genocide. Be serious.”

“I _am_ being serious,” he says. 

“Okay, you’re mental.”

“C’mon, don’t tell me it isn’t all you’ve been able to think about. I know you, Liv. You like to talk big and wave it off with a couple of jokes like it doesn't matter, but we both know that’s not how you work.” 

“Well, yes, I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind, alright?” she says, exasperation thick in her voice, “But I can tell you that I’ve never considered tearing holes in my neighboring universe. That’s kind of a big difference where I'm concerned.”

“No, ok," he says, "I _get_ that, no one’s suggesting any differently, but listen: put yourself in her position. You think you’re at war with this other universe that is completely unknown, and that, you assume, is hostile. And you’ve got this mission. Imagine everyone you’ve ever known depends on you accomplishing that mission: billions of people. And you gotta do it alone. So you get captured— the enemy’s got you, and you recognize some of their faces, but there’s always something off about the people, the places. Like a gut feeling telling you it isn’t right. Now, what would you do?”

“I don’t know, Peter. It might sound obvious to you and Lincoln, that I might be able to give you some insight on her or whatever, and I get that that’s how you think —logical steps and all your science and shit, but that's not how it works, and it's not _your face_ on the terrorist. You don’t have Broyles staring holes on your back, and you don’t have Charlie and Lincoln playing the concerned sibling routine twenty-four-seven. I’ve got enough on my plate without you using me as control group for your sociology experiments.”

Peter leans back on the booth, raises his hands in the universal surrender sign. Maybe he's pushed it too hard. "Yeah, you really do need to get laid. Should Frank and I have a talk or something?" 

She swats him, hard, but there's laughter in her tone. "My sex life, for the hundredth time, is perfectly fine and none of your business. But thanks for the concern, jackass.”

"Always at your service, Sugar."

As if on cue, Lincoln arrives with their drinks, sliding in beside Liv as he drinks the foam off his beer. "Whose sex life what? What did I miss?"

Liv rolls her eyes, and Peter grins. 

 

Later, when the bartender has all but shooed them off their seats and out the door, well after last call, Red’s hand finds its way to his forearm, the look on her perfectly sober face more serious than he’s used to or is comfortable with, considering the amount of booze on its way to his head and the lateness of the hour. 

“Peter?” she says, “I wouldn’t talk. I’d shoot my way out. If I were in her place, I’d shoot my way out. I’d shoot myself next if that doesn’t work, prevent them from getting any intel from me.”

“She doesn’t have a gun.”

“ _I’d_ get one.” 

With those words and a smile that isn’t, she turns away.

Peter watches them leave, her hand under Lincoln’s elbow to keep him from stumbling on the way to her car. Lincoln leans into her, subtlety gone at a rate proportional to the alcohol he poured in, and whispers something in her ear, making her laugh out loud. When he’s far enough away that he can no longer tell if her shoulders shake from the laughter or the chill, Peter turns the other way and starts walking the four blocks it’ll take him to get to his apartment.

Liv’s words still echo when he gets home. 

 

***

 

The buzz of the late night radio fills the car as Liv drives and Lincoln snores in the passenger seat, his neck bent and his windpipe at an awkward angle, his body diagonally splayed on the upholstery. She briefly considers finishing Lincoln’s job and finding an actual working station, but she’s afraid it might wake him up. His sleep is not alcohol induced, though she’s certain the drinks have helped him relax, but rather born of the same exhaustion she feels burning at the back of her eyes, and that makes it all the more fragile.  

They’ve had a hectic couple of months, between the people who think defying the laws of physics is a joke and the universe ending, and now a version of herself from an enemy universe materializing without so much as an alakazam or magic wand, along with a thousand new questions that have no answers. They’ve had to juggle all of those with their own personal lives, and they’ve been prepared for many things, impossible things, but everyone’s got limits, and theirs have been sorely tested. 

She wakes him up with a nudge on his shoulder when they come in sight of his building, trying to make sure she won’t have to carry him up, a situation which hasn’t happened before outside of work and that she’d be more than happy not to repeat because he’s damn heavy to be so slim. 

"Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty," she says, her voice singsong.

He blinks awake, mumbling something that might be _'I'm up, I'm up'_ before clearing his throat and sitting up straight in his seat. 

"How long was I out?" Lincoln asks, rubbing sleep from his eyes and failing with a yawn, his hair sticking up more than usual, for a man that takes better care of his hair than she does.    It's oddly endearing. 

"About half an hour, give or take," she says. 

"Huh. That felt much, much shorter."

"I'm sure there's some perfectly valid science to explain that." 

"Yeah," he says, his smile sweet and contagious, and too sincere for this time of night, "probably. Can't think of anything right now. Peter would."

"And he wouldn't shut up about it, so thank God for small mercies."

The noise that comes out of Lincoln's throat is a cross between a snort and a laugh, and with ungracefully and for no discernible reason (she's not that funny), he dissolves into laughter. The look on his face leaves her no other choice than to join him, though she's sure the tired stretch of her muscles over bruised bone probably has something to do with the sudden hilarity of the situation.  

"Are you happy?" he asks a little while later, out of the blue, when the laughter is gone and the car is silent but for his breathing and hers and the ever present buzz of the radio. She would think him to be talking in his sleep, but he's looking at her. 

"Why wouldn't I be?" She says, and tries to smile but fails. Lincoln sees through the smiles every time. 

"I don't know. You've been weird lately."

"We've all been weird lately, Linc. I doubt Charlie's ever been more uncomfortable, Peter's a mess for reasons only he knows, and you've been prickly. It happens." She doesn't even bother shrugging. Lincoln is someone who understands her ups and downs, someone she can always talk to. Someone she doesn't need to keep the truth from because it's his job to know it and, unlike her, to understand it. He's not like Peter, who will try to herd her in the direction he thinks is best, and who, when all else fails, will outsmart and out-stubborn her at every turn until she wants to rip him to pieces with a nail clipper, like the annoying older brother she never had and who she loves like one of her own for all his failings. Not like Charlie, who would believe her if she told him she wanted to quit Fringe and spend the rest of her days dancing on the moon in zero g, and would try his best to do whatever was needed to get her there. No, Lincoln is…complicated, and too tempting for his own good. She's never liked complicated before. 

And then there's Frank. 

"Not to you. I've never seen you weird --weirder, sorry," he amends, and she rolls her eyes but she smiles all the same. She bites her lip, not knowing what else to say.

"So are you? Happy, I mean," he asks, and it's really such a loaded question. She gives herself a minute, actually thinking about the answer before she replies. 

Is she happy? She has her job, she has her friends, she has her mom. She has a man waiting for her at home (at least until the next viral outbreak) who tells her he loves her and is easy to love, who keeps her warm at night in the otherwise cold apartment, and knows that sometimes there will be more important things for her than coming home early, if at all.

"Yeah…yeah, I am," she says. It's not a lie, not quite. Truth is, she's not sure she knows the answer.

"Good," he says, and he leaves it at that.

As she drives home, the thought stays with her, his question heavy. They keep too many secrets. 

 

 ***

 

There's something about this woman, something hard in her eyes. At first, he thinks hard as in brittle, hard as in fragile and sharp, like glass, and it's strange, because he knows her features, but they feel all wrong on her face. Like she's wearing a mask that doesn't fit her quite right.

Peter can't tell what she's thinking, and that might be the strangest thing of all. Liv wears her emotions on her sleeve; good or bad, she broadcasts them for everyone to see. Not so, the blonde sitting across from him on her cot. He clears his throat, sits forward on the metal chair to rest elbows on knees.

"You haven't met me before, but I'm hoping you'll agree to talk to me," he says, "I'm Agent Bishop." 

She doesn't respond, but something like curiosity flickers in her expression, something mercurial, gone with the next blink of her eyes. Crowding her in her cell may not have been the smartest decision, but it's a risk he was willing to take. 

"Look, I know this is not the best of situations for you, but believe me when I tell you that we want to help. If this David Jones really is the leader of a terrorist cell, he might have some useful information that could help us prevent the next attack," he goes on, "That is…something my side sorely needs."

The idea here is to make her believe that their goals are the same, that her mission is as important to him as it is to her so that she will reveal some of her intentions, her plans. Getting her to trust him might be too much to ask, but cooperation from her part would be a good start.

"Anything you can tell me about him, about his methods, about the things he's done to your side, it all helps. You have a familiarity with his M.O. that we lack, so," he opens the envelope in his hands, takes the pictures out and sets them on the edge of the cot, where she can reach them without changing the distance between them. She reminds him of the lions at the zoo. Dangerous creatures, sad and hopeless behind their bars, but always wild. "These are some of the unsolved fringe events of the last six months. It would be helpful, if you were to look at them, and tell me if there is anything about them that stands out to you."

He waits for her to react, to take the pictures, to throw them in his face if that'll make her move, but she only looks at him, scanning his face, making him wonder if she even heard what he said.  

Peter sighs. 

"You're wasting your time," she says, her voice low; its quality, unchanged by static and faulty recordings, is rounder, more measured than he expected. Peter sits back.

"How so?" he asks.

She takes the pictures, flipping through them with a small frown on her face. She sets them down, halfway through. "Jones wouldn't have anything to do with these."

 "And you know this because…"

"Because these aren't your unsolved cases," she says, her eyes fixed on him, "You haven't believed a word I've said, and you think my side is hostile. Why would you let an invader from another universe so much as peek into your records?"

"That's a great question. Why would you _invade_ if your universe isn't hostile?"

"A one-woman retrieval team is hardly an invasion."

" _A one-woman retrieval team._ That's a nice name, has a nice ring to it," he says, his jaw set, "tell me, are you aware of the damage your "retrieval" almost caused? Your little stunt almost costs us an entire city block and its inhabitants. The pictures you have in your hands are only five percent of the cases we've taken on for the past six months, and every single one of them is riddled with victims, so forgive the establishment for jumping to conclusions when we find the direct responsible at the scene of the crime, for once." He regrets the words the moment they leave his mouth. He is unbalanced, and desperate to have stable ground under his feet, the last thing he wants is to show weakness--the real kind. It is not a feeling he's used to. Adaptability is his strongest suit, manipulation something he has always excelled at. He's always known which buttons to push, but it seems that in this instance all his instincts are wrong. He's flying blind, instruments backwards because familiarity is not something he can rely on with her. 

“Sorry,” he says, "I shouldn't have done that."

Her head moves a fraction and it's almost a nod, like his outburst is the most natural thing. Like desperate men with irrational tempers are normal parts of her day. "You're not used to being found out, are you?" she says.

He has to laugh, shaking his head. This job will drive him crazy, someday.  “What gave me away?”

“You smile when you lie,” she says.

 

 *** 

 

 _It's a family trait_ , Olivia wants to say, but refrains. Her position is precarious enough as it is. 

She wonders how Walter would react, if he saw him here, alive; the son he lost twenty-five years ago. The resemblance clicked the moment he identified himself and looked at her. They don’t look alike, but Bishop has his father’s eyes, his way of disrupting the air in the room with his presence alone, and Olivia hasn’t believed in coincidences since flight 627 knocked at her door. 

“That’s good to know,” he says, like she’s given him a valuable piece of information, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. “You should know that we know Jones isn’t real.”

She raises her eyebrows, “he isn’t?” she says.

“David Robert Jones used to be a biochemistry professor at Oxford University. We ran facial recognition software through all the camera footage the Ministry of Transportation has gathered of the past six months, starting ten days before the date you gave and including the details you gave us about the bandages, and the scars. All of this regardless of the fact that our Mister Jones died in a fire around ten years ago, next December. And guess what we found?”

“Nothing,” Olivia says, expecting as much. He’ll lie low for as long as he can, for as long as he needs to. Her only advantage would have been her knowledge of his target, that she was sent to protect him, but she can't very well tell them that they need to find William Bell, and expose her only ally. 

The device around his ear beeps thrice in a row, and he stands, taking the pictures back. He sighs.

“I didn’t lie when I said my side could use some help. If you’re really not the enemy, why not help?” he asks, his hand knocking on the door for the guard to let him out.

“I’m not your enemy” she tells him, “but now I can’t be sure that you aren’t mine.”

He doesn’t turn before he leaves. The door offers a soft click as it closes behind him. He’ll be back, and she'll be ready for him. After all, she has wounded his pride. 

 

***

 

It is a day for unexpected developments, it seems. Who knew the boy would have it in him to take matters into his own hands? This is what Walter thinks as the recording from _CCTV 19_ plays out in front of his eyes, his son and the woman arguing in monochrome on his personal screen. It is too early yet, to determine whether this interaction is good or bad for his plans. If it makes a difference at all. 

"Mister Secretary?" his assistant interrupts via his office's comm, "Doctor Fayette asked me to let you know he is ready to initiate procedures as soon as tomorrow morning, and he would like authorization to move the subject to the observation wing in Liberty Island."

Walter stops playback, presses the green button on the comm, "Authorize the relocation, and let the good doctor know that he is to expect my visit. That will be all for today, Abigail."

"Yessir. Good evening, Mister Secretary," she says, and her voice is replaced by the static of an active comm.

"And to you as well, Abigail," he says, his mind back on the topic of his boy. 

Walter Bishop has always been proud of his son. Despite their differences, Peter grew up to be a fine young man. But the boy is stubborn as a mule and devoid of ambition, too easily ruled by his heart instead of his mind. Too much like the mother who raised him, at times. That may prove problematic at some point. 

 

***

 

  _Should've known it would be in the water_ , she thinks through the cotton-candy fog of her mind, the plastic cup that the guard slipped in through the hole on the door toppled over somewhere on the floor.  Her limbs are still positioned the same as they were when she fell on the ground by the cot, limp; legs at an awkward angle, her wrist painfully bent against her chest. Her eyes burn and water but she can't blink the sensation away.

In her line of sight she sees boots coming closer, blurring together, the sounds distorted and the taste of bile on her tongue, sight and hearing impaired, sense of smell compromised and her body numb. 

"Take her to my lab," one of the men says, wearing something white, vowel sounds round and far away, consonants harsh. 

Olivia has heard his voice before.


	5. Desperate Times

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, many, many thanks to my beta, who should get an award for being so patient and actually succeeding in figuring out what the hell I'm talking about 90% of the time.

“Bishop, slow down.” Phillip Broyles looks up from the monthly performance reports, his expression sour. “You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack. More to the point, you’re gonna give me a heart attack. What is so important that you barge into my office, unannounced, at -"  he checks his wrist watch, " _seven fifteen_ in the morning?”

Peter breathes deeply, reminds himself that grabbing his superior officer by the shoulders and shaking him until he understands the gravity of the situation is probably a Very Bad Idea. He braces himself against the back of one of the leather chairs at the edge of the dark, synthetic desk. Like most of the non-metallic materials in the office, it has been airbrushed and polished to look something like redwood. He wonders briefly if it was nostalgia that guided the choices of interior decor; Peter hasn’t seen a sequoia tree since he was twelve years old, and he doubts there’s a chunk of their admittedly large annual budget predestined for the acquisition and renovation of million-dollar antiques that won’t do anyone any good other than sit prettily in an office.

“Sir,” he says. “The other Olivia Dunham is missing.”

“Missing?” Broyles frowns. “What d’you mean missing?”

“I mean, sir, that she was not in her cell ten minutes ago when I went in to question her again,” Peter says, placing his pad on the desk, complete with live video footage of the empty cell.  “I mean that unless you have a reasonable explanation, I’m afraid we’re either witnessing our first case of teleportation, or invisibility. I didn’t think I’d need to stress the importance of this particular subject to you of all people, sir, but I've been known to be wrong in the past.”

Unimpressed, Broyles stares back. “Are you done?” he asks, like he makes a living out of dealing with unruly children.

In reality, Peter thinks, they’re all just psychiatric disasters waiting to happen, bundles of frayed nerves and adrenaline wrapped in paranoid awareness of the dangers that threaten them.

Peter sighs. “Yes, sir.”

“Take a seat, Bishop,” Broyles says, motioning to the chair Peter has been digging a fist into since he came in. His expression is one of distaste. Not towards him exactly, but rather the situation at hand.

Peter hesitates. “Sir?”

“Sit. Down.” The man does hate repeating himself. When he complies Broyles leans forward, pulls up a video file for Peter to look at. The clip is short. It shows DoD security personnel escorting a gurney through the higher Division hallways, the ones crisscrossing the building all the way to the helipad up top. The woman on the gurney is the one he’s been looking for.

“The prisoner isn’t missing,” Broyles explains, body language suggesting that his limited reservoir of patience is nearing its end. “She was transferred to the Research and Development wing under DoD late last night. You, of course, would have been informed of this along with the rest of your team, if you had waited for your debriefing later today and actually remembered to attend.”

Peter ignores the jab, leans back. He forces his hands to relax against the fake leather of the armrests, his jaw set as he processes the news. Though he is certain of the answer, he finds himself needing to ask:

“Transferred on whose orders?”

 

***

 

They underestimate her body's tolerance for abuse.

Olivia regains her mobility slowly, painfully, sooner than they know. Pins and needles prick her insides; an acidic feeling burns its way from bone marrow to joints—shoulders and wrists and elbows and knees. It is an itch on her skin, and it hurts to breathe, the air too dry, her back sore from being still so long.

Above her, below and all around the world is white, indistinct because blinking would give away her accelerated recovery. Her eyes feel heavy, grainy and dry.

By the time they move her from what looks like a CT machine and start sticking needles into her, she's as fully mobile as she's going to get—it’s difficult to check while they observe, but Olivia knows her body. She knows what it feels like to be trapped inside your skin, unable to move, barely capable of breathing. More importantly, she knows what a comedown feels like, much more than she’d like.

Her newfound mobility is not a good thing. There is a trick to lying still, like pretending to sleep. It is difficult. There is a particular relaxation in slumber, a slackness of the limbs that drug induced paralysis aims to replicate, where the body is unresponsive and supple. Consciousness, by virtue of opposites, means tension, means motion. She breathes as deeply as she is able, forces herself to relax.

The needles are cold in the crook of her arm, but then needles always are. She thinks she should be phobic of labs, of chemicals, of scientists in general by now. It is amazing how well conditioning works, when done early enough that all memory of manipulation fades from the subject’s mind (from the child’s mind).

Bodies lean over her, chattering away about procedures and tests as they move around the gurney she has been placed on, but not strapped to. She is not paying attention to the voices. It takes her a moment to realize that she has not been bound. They must not expect her to move at all until they’re done. Lucky for her, Olivia has always been good at defying expectations.

Brandon Fayette—she recognizes him now— puts his gloved hands on her face, pushes at her eyelids to reveal the reddened, dry sclera beneath. She sees her opportunity when he reaches into the pockets of his lab coat, face close enough that she can smell the sugar on his breath, but his attention elsewhere. Without hesitation, Olivia pushes her body upright, her hands grabbing onto his tie and his coat, pulling him down, towards her. She crashes her forehead against the bridge of his nose, and hears the sickening crack as bone breaks and cartilage ruptures.

He pushes her aside. As he falls backwards, stunned, bloody nosed and out of balance, she reaches for the syringe on the tools cart beside her. She sticks it into one panicking lab assistant as she swings around, feels the needle puncture through cloth and muscle before she pushes off the gurney with unsteady knees.

The third man in the room, distracted from the commotion by the sight on the other end of a microscope, gets a metal tray to the head and a kick to the gut. He wheezes as he falls, tries to speak without air. Olivia pays him no mind. She turns and runs for the door.

It opens before she gets to it, revealing a surprised guard reaching for his gun, alerted by the commotion. Olivia slaps the gun away, punches a nearby scalpel through his forearm without thinking, letting her instincts decide. She pushes his head hard against the wall with her other hand, and she rushes out of the room.

She is almost at the end of the corridor when she feels the darts: two spots of bright orange pain blooming on the curve of her scapula, followed by a torrent of nausea. She has the presence of mind to reach out before she falls. Olivia leans against the wall, lets her body slide down until she reaches the ground. Feeling dims and disappears, but she remains wide awake. Angry tears pool in the corners of her eyes, but refuse to fall. She wishes they had the decency to knock her out, for once.

 

***

 

Talking his way past the personal assistant is not quite as easy as Peter expected. He guesses turning on the charm on the cute, military-type intern instead of the actual assistant might have had something to do with that, but how was he to know the difference?

The actual assistant—Abigail, the name tag reads—regards him, unimpressed, as she comes back to her seat from wherever she was. The tight expression on her face tells him that she’s perfectly aware of his intentions. The intern, sheepish, hurriedly leaves the desk to stand at her post by the door. “The Secretary is only available by appointment, Agent Bishop,” Abigail tells him, falsely bright. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Not exactly,” Peter replies with a practiced smile, trying to extract his foot from his mouth with as much grace as he can muster. “But as I was telling Private Anders here, I can assure you it is important, and he will want to see me.”

Abigail purses her lips, her expression bitter. “Agent Bishop, there is not a single meeting inside that office that doesn’t deal with something important, but the rest of the people wanting to discuss their important matters with the Secretary of Defense still need to take a number. So please, take a number, and let me do my job.”

That's a shutdown if he has ever heard one, and Peter straightens to his full height, rubs his hand against his forehead in exasperation. “Look, ma’am, I appreciate your dedication and I’m sure you always do this good of a job fending people off, but if you knew what I know, what the Secretary needs to know, you would’ve been opening that door and pushing me inside about an hour ago, so please, let _me_ do my job.”

Intimidation at least seems to be more effective than charm in this instance, as the woman pointedly looks away from his face and fidgets with her keyboard. “I understand that your matter is urgent, Agent, but there is a reason these protocols have been put in place and I cannot just ignore them. Don’t make me call security on you, I’m sure neither of us would like that.”

 _Oh, come on,_ Peter thinks. He resists the urge to meet her threat with an eye roll. The last thing he needs is another disciplinary report recorded onto his file. At this rate they will demote him before the next election-- not that he'd mind, but they don’t pay him enough as it is.

 _You’re losing your touch, Bishop,_ he berates himself. He relaxes his brow, lets the smile come back to his face. The extra stress of the last few days must be getting to him more than he had thought; on a scale of one to completely-fucked-up an uptight secretary doesn’t even rank. He works in Fringe Division. He's dealt with fucked-up often enough to last him a couple of lifetimes.

“That’s not going to be necessary, Abigail,” Peter says. “Listen, all you need to do to get me to stop bothering you is give him a call right now, and let him know I’m waiting. It’s as easy as that. I’ll take a seat on that bench over there and I’ll wait. That way, when the Secretary has some time to spare for national security details that he requested himself, and he admonishes you for not making me come in sooner, there won’t be any chance of me being in the way. How about that?”

That does the trick, alright.

 

***

 

The access corridor gives way to high ceilings and clean-cut angles highlighted by the floor-to-ceiling windows at the back, a few paintings and a map of their many failings adorning the otherwise bare cement walls. It is tasteful, that much Peter is willing to admit.

Walter moves back behind his desk, having come out to usher him inside, much to the assistant's dismay. He sits, undoing the last button of his suit jacket for comfort’s sake, and pours himself a drink. “Take a seat, Peter. Have a drink with me.”

“Thanks, but no, thanks,” Peter says, and remains standing. These stunted interactions are par for the course between father and son.

Walter relaxes into his chair, the springs bending smoothly under his weight. “Tell me, son, since I’m assuming you didn’t come all this way to spend time with your old man, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Oh, I think you know the answer to that. Riddle me this: what on earth could you possibly gain from moving Olivia Dunham to your R&D facilities?”  

“Answers, son," Walter says. "What else?” He looks affronted by the question.

"Funny. See, I was finally making progress in that particular department, but I was notified earlier today that all my team's efforts, all those extra hours they put in over the past month, are now moot, because you decided that bypassing your own Division would be a good idea. Would you please explain to me why that is?"

"You should know that there are things Fringe Division cannot do, simply because it is bound by the same laws that it attempts to uphold. I was trying to make things easier for all of us."

 _Bullshit._ "You're the Secretary of Defense," Peter says, his tone scathing, bending at the waist to place his hands against the edge of Walter's desk. "There's never been a law you couldn't bend in the Division's favor. The President is so confident in your ability to deliver that this office is basically a government unto itself. How is removing a suspect from ongoing interrogation gonna make things easier for any of us?"

"Ah, but you're wrong. She cannot be considered, or treated, like any other suspect. There is no doubt that she is responsible--at least in part, for the event that led to her capture, and who knows how many more before that."

Peter can't shake the feeling that Walter is stalling, planning to outlast him like this is a temper tantrum and not a legitimate matter. "Technicalities, Walter. I don't need you to remind me of that, I was the one who caught her, remember? And you didn't answer my question."

Walter gives a long-suffering sigh, like Peter is being particularly slow. "I understand that you have been able to ignore the more unsavory parts of our jobs so far, son, but willful ignorance will not take you anywhere in this. There are things that we protect you Agents from, truths you wouldn't want to see or hear because they might impede your ability to do your jobs. Things that need to be done, nonetheless, if we are to have a chance at all. This is one of them. Respect that, and you'll be better off."

"A chance at what?" Peter asks, the implications of everything Walter is hinting at heavy on the back of his mind, a bitter taste on his tongue. "Just _what_ are you going to do to her that you're so afraid of me knowing, Walter? And stop dancing around the issue. For once in your life, just give me a straight answer."

His earcuff beeps twice, a call incoming. Peter ignores it, fixing his father with a stare that leaves no room for ambiguity, bristling when Walter doesn't even have the grace to look embarrassed.

His caller refuses to relent.

"You should get that," Walter comments with a tone that would suggest they've been speaking of the weather.

Reluctantly, he reaches for the cuff. It's Lincoln on the other end. "Dammit, Linc, not now. I'm in the middle of something."

"Uh, yeah, we just caught a case, man. I'm sending the details over to your cloud, but you should get here as soon as you can. It doesn't look pretty." He sounds about as tired as Peter feels, and it makes him wonder if there will ever come a day when waking for another day on this crumbling existential plane will stop feeling like torture.

Peter closes his eyes, rubs a hand down his face. "When does it ever? I'm on my way."

He ends the call. “This isn’t over,” he says to Walter before he makes his way out the door, and he means every word.

 

***

 

_Williamsburg, NY._

 

Charlie turns away when his eyes hit the body, visibly gagging as he tries to turn it over with his boot. “Ugh, I think I’d have preferred bugs."

It is a gruesome sight. The corpse, a middle-aged man with an unremarkable everything except he's thin as a reed, lies on a pool of white, semi-viscous liquid streaked with red that he seems to have vomited in the moments before his death. Greenish tentacle-like tendrils extrude from his orifices: mouth, and nostrils, and ears, even the spaces between his eyeballs and the wrinkled skin of his eyelids. They haven't counted the orifices covered by clothing, but Liv has the suspicion that they will find that the trend continues. The limbs are bent, unnaturally rigid given the time of death, wrists flexed and stiff, dirty fingers arranged into claws.

“That's just because you'd have an excuse to go see you girlfriend during work hours,” Lincoln says, winking at her in complicity as he crouches to get samples, swabbing at the corpse’s nose and mouth with quick, efficient motions that require little contact. Despite the humor, she knows he is as unsettled as Charlie looks. Liv has always been better at shutting out the things that upset her. Having a stronger stomach also helps, but the boys have never liked to be reminded of that. Something about deflated egos not being conducive to a case well solved or a restful night. They know it and she knows it, and, for the most part, it is enough.

Charlie makes a face. “Ha. Ha. Ha. You think you're so funny."

"Oh, but I _am_ funny." Lincoln collects the swabs into a refrigerated container, pressing the lid shut with a click that's barely audible against the sounds of busy street life around the alley.

Liv grins, mischievous, pressing her knees against Charlie's back. "I'd have to agree with Lincoln, here. I mean, look at him, he even looks funny."

"Hey!" Lincoln protests, pouting like a five-year-old, lower lip sticking out and a furrowed brow over illegally pretty baby blue eyes. It makes her laugh out loud.

"You walked into that one," Peter cuts in as he swings his upper body down and under the red tape outlining the crime scene. He is shivering in the breeze, sleeves pulled down over his wrists, looking distracted.

"Nice of you to join us, Captain," she tells him as he reaches them, in a fairly accurate imitation of Broyles' commanding tone. He has his hands shoved into his pockets in an effort to get warm, seems to have forgotten his jacket in the car.

Peter rolls his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Don't start." He gives a soft push against her knee as he crouches beside Charlie, taking the bite out of his words, grimacing at the corpse. "So, what have we got?"

"Name's Winston Clarke, forty-seven, divorced. No current address is given. He's been arrested for possession a couple of times in the last few years, but never served time," Charlie reads from his pad.

Lincoln, who has been intently staring at the samples, looks back at the corpse, perplexed. "Huh."

"What?" Peter and Liv ask at the same time.

Lincoln smirks a little, holding his open hands out in front of him in the universal signal of surrender. "The white liquid? According to the chemical analysis it's actually spinal fluid, mixed with a variety of enzymes that the human body doesn't normally produce--that's what's giving it the color and the gelatinous consistency."

Peter takes an extra cotton swab off the field kit, pokes at the little tendrils coming out the body's mouth, moving them to the side. It would look vaguely comical, if it weren't so incredibly disgusting. "My guess is we can probably blame that on Cthulhu here. It also looks like he crawled all the way out from the bar's backdoor, judging by the markings on the ground and the scraping on his elbows and arms. Did anyone see it happen?"

Liv shakes her head. "No, I've interviewed everyone who was still inside when we got the call, and the only person who remembers even seeing the guy was the bartender. He was also the one who found him lying here when he took the trash out. Apparently Mr. Clarke has been a regular for the past couple of months. Bartender said he remembered the guy because he'd never drink anything but water. The only other thing he could tell us was that he seemed sick when he came in."

“Hmm, water at a bar, I thought you were the only one who did that. Did he mention any particular symptoms?" Lincoln asks.

Liv snorts, shakes her head and starts to read from the pad Charlie has been holding for her. "Um, he said, and I quote, 'the guy looked feverish, all sweaty, glassy eyed and everything, like he hadn't had a good night's sleep in a few days'."

"Sounds pretty standard. That could be anything from the flu to an epidemic in the making. Any cameras around?" Peter asks.

"Yeah, there's one right over there, above the backdoor,” Charlie says, pointing at the surveillance equipment bolted to the brick wall a few feet away. “Security purposes. We've got the footage already," Peter claps Charlie on the shoulder with his left hand, stands up. "Ok, good," he says."Have the body taken to medical so they can cut Tentacle Monster out of him and tells us what it is. And get the ex-wife's address, she might be able to fill us in on what he was up to, or at least where to start."

Charlie nods and stands, already on his way to do just that. "Will do, boss."

Peter turns to Lincoln with a mock-glare, "See, you got everything handled. You didn't need me here at all." He says this jokingly, though she detects a subtle note of honest-to-god annoyance in his tone.

Lincoln shrugs. "Hey, we get to meet Tentacle Corpse Dude, you get to meet Tentacle Corpse Dude with us. Team spirit, they teach it in high school."

"Ah. That must be why I got the hell outta there as soon as I had the chance." Peter gestures with both hands like he is saying _Eureka, I found it_ , whatever it is. Only then does Liv notice the fine silver chain he inadvertently took out of his pocket along with his hands. It’s wrapped around his fingers, which curl in a loose fist around an object that she never thought she'd see again.

"Where did you get that?" she asks, feeling the blood drain from her face as she grabs his arm.

Peter looks like the proverbial deer in the headlights as he opens his hand to reveal a slim silver cross on his palm. "Uh, the other Olivia's evidence bag. Why?"

"My…my mother had one exactly like that. She loved that cross."

"What happened to it?" Lincoln asks after a pause, like he is not sure if he is allowed. She doesn't see him come closer until she has him right there, in front of her.

"You said your mother _had_ one," Peter explains at her questioning look. He and Lincoln do that too often, finishing each other's sentences, sharing the same thoughts.

Liv swallows before answering; seven years later and she still doesn't find it any easier to talk about. She knows they'd respect it if she chose not to say anything more. It might be why she doesn't stop, like ripping a bandaid off. "She, uh, she gave it to Rachel, my sister, when we found out she had VPE…It was diagnosed pretty late in her pregnancy, there was nothing to do but hope she'd be strong enough…or that the doctors could save her or the baby. Her…heart gave out in the middle of it. They tried to save the baby, but they were too slow. She was born dead. I never even knew what Rachel wanted to call her. We buried my mother's cross with her, figured it was what Rachel would've wanted."

 

***

 

Peter can see her through the reinforced glass on the wall, and the sight is painful to watch. The cell is small, smaller than the last one, not even wide enough for a cot. There is only a bench, the padded walls, and her. Olivia has shoved her body against the corner, knees pulled up to her chest, her spine curled inwards so far that only her lower back touches the wall behind. Her head rests on the edge of the bench, tilted to the side, her eyes closed. It probably feels as uncomfortable as it looks. She seems thinner than he remembers, though it has only been a week since he saw her last.

The guard stops him before opening the door. "Captain, sir, you're going to need to leave your weapon outside," he says, an apologetic look on his face.

"C'mon Joe, what do you think I'm gonna do in there?" Peter asks, taken aback.

"Orders from the top, sir," the guard shrugs. "She tried to escape a couple of days ago, messed up some of the science personnel pretty bad. Corporal Jameson got a scalpel through his forearm. It's nothing personal, sir," he explains.

 _I’d get one_ , he remembers Liv saying, breath steaming on a cold night. He can’t get the gun off his holster and into the guard’s hands fast enough, after that.

It’s worse once he gets inside. Without that layer of concrete and glass to obscure the details of what's been done to her, the small part of Peter that remains undamaged by the horrors of everything he has seen despairs. She is as white as the walls, as white as the scrubs she has been dressed in. There is an ugly purple bruise on her right temple, midnight shadows under her eyes contrasted by the little blonde specks of her eyelashes. There are angry red ligature marks on the thin skin of her wrists, where she must have fought to free her hands from their bindings. Her hands and feet have not been unbound even though she has been put under lock, with a guard at her door day and night. He refuses to smile at that, though he finds that he wants to. She must have caused one hell of a ruckus to make them paranoid enough that it has come to that.

Consciously, Peter is aware that the reason he feels so uncomfortable about this is because he has made an emotional transfer to some degree. He is reacting to her the same way he would react to Liv if she were the one lying across from him, because her appearance is the only thing about her that is familiar and his subconscious has latched onto that. It makes him angry.  Consciously, he prefers to think she deserves the sympathy on the simple fact that no human being should be treated like this.

Olivia opens her eyes as he sits on the floor with his back to the door, not even half a meter between the toes of his boots and her feet. It makes the bruises under her eyes look even worse, and he would be surprised to learn she has slept more than an hour in the past week. There is no feeling to the look she gives him, just a rapid-fire assessment that he senses happening behind her eyes, if only because pupil dilation indicates she is actually focused and present. He forces himself not to shift under the scrutiny, feeling like she is testing his mettle with one simple look. It's unsettling.

Strangely, he feels the need to explain himself. "I'm pretty sure I'm the last person you want to see, but, I thought…" he scratches his jaw, uncertain now. "Actually? I have no idea what I'm doing here. You were transferred out, officially. Every signature and every stamp is in the right place, and it's not going to change just because I don't like it. I probably don't even have the clearance to be sitting here right now."

For some reason, his fumbling explanation makes her smile. It's cynical, joyless. It doesn't reach her eyes. "Morbid curiosity," she says at last. Her voice is rough. He imagines it’s due to the screaming, her throat raw.

Peter frowns. "Maybe," he concedes. "Not entirely."

"No?"

He shakes his head, lets it fall back against the surface of the door at his back. "I think I wanted to make sure that you were still alive."

"Would it really matter if I wasn't?" she asks.

"Matter? Objectively, no, probably not. My guess is they'd just cut you up to see what makes you tick, and no one would notice, and no one would care." He wants to give her an honest answer. "Personally though, I think…I think there are still too many questions that you haven't answered."

"And how do you know that I can?"

"I don't," he admits. "But finding out is half the fun."

Olivia raises her head from its spot on the bench, slowly mirroring his position even though it looks like every inch of movement hurts. "What makes you think I'd answer anyway? You'd probably use anything I give you to hurt my people."

Peter shrugs, neither denying nor confirming. He hasn't thought that far ahead yet. "It works in the movies."

This time the smile is real. She closes her eyes. "You have those over here?" she asks, deadpan.

"What else do you think we do for fun? Experiment on people?"

"Could’ve fooled me."

A stretch of silence follows, punctuated only by his breathing and hers, and the quiet hum of Liberty Island above and below them. It is the kind of quiet for questions, tense, begging to be broken. He doesn't know where to start. What can he ask her that he is not already convinced she won't answer? Maybe he is deluding himself. Maybe there is no point in being here at all. If his staring makes her uncomfortable she gives no sign.

Eventually, his earcuff rings, shattering the silence. Peter answers, rubbing at his eyes, expecting Lincoln even before he speaks. His partner informs him that Medical has finally gotten the parasite out, after a day of cutting and prodding at the poor junkie bastard it killed. He is expected to meet them in the situation room as soon as he can. Before he goes, he remembers his other reason for visiting.

"There was one other thing," he says as he stands, pulling the necklace from one of the pockets in his pants. He places it on the floor, in the little space that remains between them, neutral ground. "I thought you might want this back." He doesn't wait to see what she'll do with it. Somehow, it feels too personal to witness.

"Peter?" She calls when he's halfway out the door. He pauses to listen. "You didn't come here for answers. You came to make sure your conscience was clear."

He thinks if that is what he came for, he leaves with more doubt than he brought. He fails to notice that he never gave her a first name to go with his last.

 

***

 

The report from the medical department is exhaustive. It is also one of the strangest things Lincoln Lee has read to date. In his line of work, that's saying something. "The thing is a parasite, that much is clear," he tells his team, now gathered. "It seems to have been bioengineered from some type of Amazonian leech, or at least that's about as far as medical could genetically trace it. Of course, because it's bioengineered it doesn't really resemble a leech at all. The hypothesis is that while, yes, it was meant to feed off of the victim's spinal fluid, which is what killed Mr. Clarke by altering his brain's neutral buoyancy and making it collapse under its own weight--that's what spinal fluid does by the way, or, you know, one of the things: it makes the brain float--the parasite's consumption wouldn't have amounted to much for the first few months of incubation. That kind of slow feeding would cause only mild discomfort for the host, a headache at most, maybe some fatigue. The problem is that, from what medical could tell, this one specimen's growth was accelerated exponentially.”

"Which would make it need to feed the same as if it was growing at its usual rate, only in a matter of days instead of weeks," Peter finishes for him, already seeing where he was going in the first place. He's been distracted lately, his thoughts far away, but Lincoln has to admit that he seems to be present for this, at least.

Lincoln nods. "Exactly. Clarke's brain didn't have a chance to replenish itself, so it collapsed. Now, the roots, the tentacles, whatever we wanna call 'em, act as a form of rudimentary nervous system for this thing, but because it was growing so fast it was desensitized, so instead of branching out inside the host the roots just kept going in whatever direction was unimpeded by organs, or managed to push organs out of the way. It grew so much quicker than it was prepared for, in fact, that that's what ended up killing it. Most of the cells expanded so fast they burst like water balloons. But here's the interesting bit: according to medical, it was meant to benefit the host instead of killing him."

"How'd they come up with _that_?" Charlie asks, mirroring Liv's frown and crossed arms, disbelief plain on their faces.

"Apparently, they were able to simulate the optimal host-parasite conditions from the organism's DNA data. In other words, beats me, don't ask. But, they found out that those enzymes that were mixed in with the spinal fluid are actually produced by this thing, and they seem to stimulate the production of neurons that generate dopamine in the brain."

Liv raises her eyebrows. "And this is helpful because…."

"Because our vic suffered from Parkinson's."

"That's brilliant," Peter says, and Lincoln can see that he's actually impressed.

"Why is that brilliant? I'm sorry, I just don't get it." Liv huffs, annoyed. The science-oriented part of their job has never really been her stuff. Lincoln thinks it's adorable, of course.

Peter is quick to explain. "One of the causes of motor dysfunction in people who suffer from Parkinson's is cell death in the brain, specifically-- "

"Those that produce dopamine?" Liv interrupts, having caught on with Peter's explanation.

Lincoln grins. "Yup. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter -- it's basically a catalyst for the electrical impulses that neurons send to each other, so less dopamine means slower signals, and slower signals mean less coordinated motion. "

"So, ok, let me get this straight," Charlie says. "You’re saying that someone out there just fed this guy some specially-made live bait to cure his Parkinson's, but it didn't work because of a flaw design that made the worm grow faster than either it or the guy could handle?"

"Essentially, yeah," Lincoln tilts his head this way and that. "Except they actually implanted it along the spine. There was a fresh laser scar on the base of his neck, no more than a couple of days old. It’s also cumbersome. I mean, he would’ve died eventually anyways, once the worm grew big enough to have a killer appetite. Whoever did this was just prolonging the inevitable.”

“Unless this is just a step in between,” Peter suggests. “What if whoever is doing this is just trying to make sure the cure works before he tries to kill the green, slimy messenger?”

Lincoln raises his eyebrows. “A field trial? Yeah, I suppose it could be. It actually makes a lot of sense.”

"This job," Charlie says, incredulous. "I swear to God…"

"So, what now?" Liv asks, impatient as always, bouncing back and forth on the balls of her feet.

Lincoln interlaces his fingers together and pushes out with both hands, cracking his knuckles. "Now, I guess we figure out who it was that put that thing in Winston Clarke's neck. Charlie, you got the ex-wife's address?"

"Yeah, I’ve already got a route programmed in my car. I can pull it up if you like.”

“Nah, we can all just go with you, it’s a big car.”

“No, Lincoln, you are not allowed to sit in the back of my car so you can smack me across the face when we hit a traffic jam,” Charlie says, rolling his eyes, already starting to walk towards the elevator that will take them down to the parking lot under the building.  

“Aww, but _mom_ ,” Lincoln laughs, following Liv down the spaces between workstations along the situation room’s edges into the elevator hallway, until he hears Peter calling him from behind. He turns, surprised to find that Peter hasn’t moved from where he was, leaning against the edge of the desk.

“I think I’m gonna sit this one out,” Peter says, his face grim. “And look, before you even say anything, I’ll do the paperwork, alright? All of it.”

Lincoln is tempted to raise a hand to Peter’s forehead, check his temperature like his dad used to do whenever he caught the flu at school. “Dude, are you alright? I mean, sure, I can handle it but you’ve been acting strange lately. People are starting to notice.” By people, of course, he means their superiors. And it isn’t like Peter to bail on his team without injuries to blame or an explanation ready.

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I just got somewhere I need to be.”

“Somewhere more important than out in the field, with your team?”

Peter sighs, looking wearier than Lincoln remembers ever seeing him before, the muscles in his jaw jumping every couple of seconds, his shoulders hard lines of tension. “I can’t really explain right now, but not because I don’t want to. I need you to trust me on this, please.”

“Alright,” Lincoln says, taking a deep breath, backing off. “Just make sure that you tell me when you can. I’ll let the others know, but FYI, I won’t be held responsible for Liv’s bitching.”

“Wait. That’s it?” Peter asks, surprised and, if Lincoln is right, relieved.

Lincoln shrugs, ignoring the little voice in the back of his mind telling him not to drop this without getting answers. “You asked me trust you, Captain. I am. I do. Just try not to do anything more stupid than we’re used to.”

 

***

 

“You have to stop this."

“You’re going to need to be more specific, Peter. ‘This’ is a rather general concept.”

“Experimenting on people, Walter. Violating every existing point in the Geneva Convention. Sticking needles in every nook and cranny you can find on Olivia Dunham. Is that specific enough for you, or do you need me to elaborate?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, son. I thought we’d already discussed this.”

“We discussed nothing, Walter. We discussed nothing, because like always, whatever I say to you goes in one ear and comes out the other. You don’t listen to anyone but yourself, you never have.”

“I understand your anger, son, I can even accept it. I expect it, by now, but don’t let it blind you in matters that affect billions more than you or me. Your judgement is based on what you’ve witnessed, but you don’t realize that there might be more to the picture that the pieces you’ve seen; you make your decisions with haste, without thinking. That is why I don’t listen. It does this office no good that you inherited my intellect but so stubbornly refuse to make use of it.”

“This is not about me, Walter, and it is most certainly not about you. This is about the woman you’re abusing three floors down. It’s a person that you’re poking full of holes, and the impression I got from the ‘piece of the picture’ I saw is that your chief scientist is forgetting that.”

“You disappoint me. I would have thought you’d have realized by now that you can’t afford to be soft, in your position. They would do worse to one of ours if they had the chance. The answers this woman can provide us with go beyond what she can verbally tell any of us. What we learn from studying her could ensure our survival in the long run, and I will not compromise that because of your misguided sense of righteousness. This discussion is done.”

“No. No, it is not. I don’t care what she’s done or where she’s from. I care that it’s a human being you have in there with your pet butcher, and when he’s done with her, there’s not going to be anything left that can answer any questions, verbal or otherwise. This is Guantanamo Bay all over again, Walter, and you know how well that mess turned out with the UN, don’t you?”

“What rules we’ve made for our squabbles with each other on this planet hardly apply when we’re talking about the deliberate, ongoing destruction of our universe, don’t you think?”

“Ok, let’s forget about keeping our humanity, since you’re so adamant about the fact that we don’t need it. Let’s assume for a moment that you get what you want out of her, whatever that happens to be. You seem to forget that if we want to be successful in this covert war, we would still need information about her side, information about protocols, about military power, about technology. Information that I’m telling you— and I have been telling you for the past forty-eight hours—she would be able to give us, but only if she is still alive and sane by the time Brandon is done with her, and you can’t guarantee that.”

“I don’t need to guarantee anything. We already have the answers to all of the questions you might think of asking her. All the protocols, all the numbers, anything we might need. I could tell you what the weather is like, if you want.”

“How?”

“It would be better if I showed you, I think.”

 


	6. Desperate Measures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Beta <3

“I didn’t know you were into modern art,” Peter says dryly, looking at the oozing blob of whatever-it-is on top of the examination table. Grotesque and half-formed, its shape echoes nightmares of drowning, of fighting against the currents to push to the surface for a strangled breath before it’s too late—except the material is more solid than liquid, porous, and damp. It’s what he imagines a twisted, twenty-first century version of Michelangelo’s _Prigioni_ might look like.  

Walter, as expected, ignores the jab. “We discovered in the late eighties that traveling from one universe to another, while perfectly possible, instigatesthe rapid disintegration and subsequent reintegration of the atoms of the traveling subject,” he explains. “This is due to the fact that both universes vibrate at different frequencies and to travel between them the subject would have to translate allof its information from one frequency to the other. Essentially, the subject’s atoms would need to be recalibrated to vibrate at the frequency of the subject’s destination. This recalibration would then cancel the destructive wave created by the fallout of the energy necessary to make travel possible. The problem we encountered was that to undergo such recalibration meant putting an incredible amount of stress on the reintegrated particles, as these would naturally attempt to go back to their original state. It was quickly made clear that, in the event that we tried this process with people, their organswould fail within minutes if left unattended. The other issue that quickly manifested was that, if successful travel was too frequent, eventually the subject’s particles would stop reintegrating at all, due to a progressive weakening of the bonds at the subatomic level. What you’re looking at was the solution we came up with.”

Peter raises his eyebrows, incredulous. Curious. “An ugly, orange, slimy chunk of solidified Chemical X? Great. Genius, really. What is it?”

As always, sarcasm has no effect on the pin-striped suit of armor of the Secretary of Defense. “This is the transportation state of a biomechanic sleeper agent that we designed to infiltrate the ranks of governmental institutions on the other side.”

Peter hasn't had this much mental exercise in a while. He has to pay attention to keep up. “What, like a walking, talking, breathing humanoid spy?”

“Yes, exactly. As the experiments progressed we realized that, while organic material suffered a rapid and devastating degradation—theoretically due to the ongoing chemical exchanges necessary to sustain it, which were impeded by stress—everyday objects, inert objects, had a higher degree of resistance to this stress, which led to the development of our first wave of offense.”

“But wait, how would they infiltrate if they can’t be found in any database on the other side,” Peter asks. “There’ve got to be security checks for their government personnel.”

Walter smiles, like he expected the question. It occurs to Peter that there is a very real possibility that he has been set up. That Walter wanted him here all along, asking these questions, making these arguments. The thought sets his teeth on edge. “That was the other roadblock we hit when we were designing them. We solved it with mercury.”

“Mercury. As in, the metal?” Peter gives the blob another once over, just out of curiosity. If he pays close attention he can see the shape of the knees and the knobs of the spine, a hint of a ribcage in the series of diagonal depressions on both sides.

Walter nods. “Given its fluidity, it occurred to us that it would be the perfect material to make soldiers that could change their features to look like whomever they needed.”

“These things are _shape-shifters_?” Peter asks, incredulous.

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose they are,” Walter says, his hands flat on the surface of the table. “They take on the appearance of their targets and replace them. It has been a very useful invention.”

Peter takes a moment to digest this, his jaw set, aware of Walter’s evaluating stare. This is not at all what he expected. And still, it is not what he’s here for, and it makes no sense.  “Here is the thing I don’t get: if you have all this information and you have soldiers that can fight your war, what do you want the other Olivia for?”

“Because they are not the solution you make them out to be,” Walter says. “These, like all machines, have their limitations, the first of which is their number. To take on a new identity, they must dispose of the person they are replacing, and while mercury solved one problem, it engendered more. A shape-shifter, as you call them, cannot stay in one body for more than a limited number of days without the onset of visible decay. They carry a device with them, it allows them to model their features to that of their targets by mapping the target’s phenotypical expressions into the mercury under their skin, with the help of an electrical discharge. To avoid the decay I mentioned, they must synchronize continuously with the information stored in the device. This will help, for a while. Some have lasted years in the same bodies, but, eventually, they will have to move to another. If we were to send a number of machines exponentially larger than the one we already have, it would be only a matter of time until the body count is large enough to be noticed by the other side, in which case, they would know to prepare themselves.  That would be… inconvenient. And a machine is not a man, Peter, no matter how well made it is.”

Peter crosses his arms across his chest, his frown deepening. He has to remind himself that playing the long game is always better where Walter is concerned. “Ok, so you can’t send more than the ones you have because it would no longer be covert, and you don’t have the resources or whatever, but how does that lead back to Dunham?”

“When she got here I requested that the hospital take a number of samples for preliminary testing,” Walter explains. “Routine comparisons. There was nothing out of the ordinary with them, all the tests presented us with the data of a healthy person. That’s when we realized that we needed more tests. You see, she wasn’t showing any signs that would indicate that she had just crossed universes. No molecular degradation, no decay, no weakening of her subatomic bonds.”

“You’re telling me that you think she has the ability to cross universes without consequences. How is that even possible, Walter?”

“By all accounts, it shouldn’t be. And that is why it is imperative that the experiments that you so vocally oppose be allowed to continue," Walter says vehemently, finally showing an emotion other that certainty and satisfaction at Peter's willingness to play along. It's the chink in his armor.

Peter knows how to exploit weakness, it's a lesson from daddy dearest. It was only a matter of waiting for it show. “Alright. I understand the point you’re making, but here’s a thought: in the remote instance that what you’re saying is true, and she’s somehow the pinnacle of human evolution or whatever it is you think she is, killing her won’t help you. Driving her insane won’t help you. You would still need an understanding of her ability that, without her, you’d have to get through trial and error, and if she dies the only way that you can do that is by taking what data you’ve gathered and experimenting on more people to replicate the results. Our people this time, Walter. I’m not sure you want to do that without knowing everything there is to know about her abilities first. For all you know, she’s the only one who can do this.”

“I suppose you have a point," Walter says, his voice reluctant.

Peter fights not to smile. “Yes, thank you for noticing. The problem is that I don’t think it’s going to be easy to convince little Igor of this particular point. You haven’t really done too good of a job reining him in, in the past.”

“And I suppose you’d do it better?”

“I can try.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

“Well, Walter, unlike you, I know how to tell when Brandon’s gone a little too far. I’m sure I’ll come up with something to keep that from happening. Even if I have to punch him in the face myself,” Peter lets himself smirk at the thought. “I think I’d actually enjoy that.”

“Very well," Walter concedes. "Under one condition.”

“Name it.”

“You will tell your team that you have been requested for a special assignment, and they will know nothing of this.”

_Goddammit, Walter_ , he thinks. Lincoln is not going to like this. “Done.”

 

***

 

The ex-wife ended up being that one wobbly domino whose fall unraveled the pattern in full. Angela Clarke, happily divorced, led them to their victim’s sister. She confessed that, while she had been steadfastly ignoring her ex-husband’s attempts at communication to shield her children from the repercussions of his addiction, she did keep in touch with her sister-in-law, who, she knew, was still heavily involved in their victim’s recovery.

Clarke’s sister, in turn, graciously extended the addresses of the various support groups the victim had been attending for the past few months, as well as that of a new doctor he had been seeing. Tragic, she’d said, that her brother died such a gruesome death after making so much progress in controlling his drug problem. Judging by her surprise at the news, Clarke had kept his illness a secret to all but the person responsible for his death.

The support groups had been a bust. The doctor, on the other hand, turned out to be a well of information. A neurologist, Dr. Robert Watts informed them that Clarke had been directed his way by the physiotherapist at the detox facility where he had committed himself, in the weeks following his divorce. They learned that, while he was the one to diagnose Clarke’s Parkinson’s, Watts had not been in charge of the man’s treatment for over a month. Apparently, his methods were too slow and ineffective for the patient’s satisfaction—here, Watts commented on how Clarke did not seem to comprehend that he suffered from an illness that, as of yet, has no known cure.

The doctor’s face when they told him the specificsof his former patient’s death is something Charlie’s not going to forget any time soon.

Despite his horror and incredulity (and if Lincoln is right, his envy), Watts’ knowledge of the neurological research circles proved to be invaluable. That’s how they end up here, about to raid Dr. Lionel Giordano’s house with a full-tactical squad right behind them.

Charlie grits his teeth at the sting of the injection, the eight tiny needles piercing his skin in a circular pattern, over the forearm tattoo he’d gotten in memory of his first partner. Scott’s been ambered almost four years and counting, but Charlie still remembers to swing by and wish his little girl happy birthday every time May comes around on the calendar. It’s the least he can do.

He’d made a promise back then, to enjoy life a little more, but it’s hard. It’s hard to wake up every morning and know that it’s only because of the efficacy of a drug that the spiders in his gut haven’t grown, haven’t eaten a hole through him to get outside. Years later and he still can’t quite cope with living the rest of his life like this. He knows he’s going to have to.

Lincoln motions from his spot by the front door, signaling for them to lock-and-load and pay attention. The lights flick on in the kitchen area.Charlie takes his gun out of his holster in one smooth move, checks the clip and the chamber and thumbs the safety off, the motions as natural as breathing. From the corner of his eye he sees Liv do the same, her gun held low, her stance ready.

Two men from tactical step forward, an enforcer (big, bad, handheld battering ram) held between them. When Lincoln gives the order, they swing. The door comes off its hinges with a bang and a heavy thud as the splintered wood hits the ground.

Charlie rushes into the building after the rest of his team, holding the rear, upper body moving side to side as he checks for threats the rest of them might have missed. It’s his job to make sure nothing catches them by surprise—it’s the one thing he’s good at.

Liv has her marksmanship, Peter his IQ and Lincoln his fancy degree, but Charlie has this. He’s good at being cautious, at listening, at connecting the dots. He’s dependable. In more ways than one, he keeps them together.  He’s needed.

Charlie holds the rear. It’s his place.

 

***

 

Giordano jumps out the window. He scrambles over the tiles of the lower roof, but keeps on advancing towards the edge at a steady pace. Lincoln jumps after him, his gun back in his holster as he fights to keep his footing on the slippery clay, cursing the light drizzle that falls over them.

Lincoln’s not fast enough. Giordano hops off the roof, rolling over his shoulder to reduce the impact of his fall—he’s very fit for a man that spends his days sitting in a lab, playing with genetic code like it’s a game of scrabble and he’s aiming for a high score. He runs into the street, weaving through the black tactical vans, sprinting like a mad man, and Lincoln thinks _this is it, I’m gonna lose him_.

And then Charlie’s on him, tackling him to the ground, and Lincoln didn’t even see him run out of the house but his partner’s right there, pressing Giordano’s face against the hard asphalt, cuffing his hands behind his back and calling for tactical to move him to a car.

Lincoln hops down to the ground, slowly now. He sits down on the grass, arms around his knees, lets himself relax. After a while of staring at nothing, controlling his breathing, he feels Liv’s knees on his backprodding gently. He looks up.

“Climbing not your thing?” she asks, looking down at him with a challenge in her eyes, one blonde eyebrow raised. Teasing.

Lincoln makes a face, sticks his tongue out at her. This, he can play. “Yeah, yeah, not all of us have monkey DNA, Red. You’re gonna have to get used to that sooner or later.”

She snorts, hits him on the shoulder. “You’re just mad cause you know I’d do it better and I’d still look pretty.”

“As if,” Lincoln says. “I bet you I’d win if we made it a competition. Just make a poll in the division and watch my looks beat you to next Sunday.”

“That’s just ‘cause there’s more women than men in the division, you idiot, and you’ve been to the infirmary so much that you’ve got all the nurses wrapped around your little finger.”

“Agent Dunham, is that jealousy I’m detecting?” Lincoln asks, pulling himself to his feet and slapping wet grass off his butt.

Red crosses her arms, glares at him. “In your dreams, Lee.” The way she says it makes it sound serious, but under the porch lights, he can see her eyes revealing her amusement.

“Hey, children,” Charlie calls from the door, smirking. “There’s some stuff down in the basement that you’re gonna wanna see, when you’re done bickering.”

The basement is more lab than anything else, with all the cutting edge equipment one could hope for in such a space and reams of information that the medical community would probably sacrifice a small town for.

Throughout it all, Lincoln can’t help but think it feels weird to be there without Peter.

  


***

 

He can’t actually stop anything. Instead, Peter is forced to witness the damage.

They inform him early on of her unusually high tolerance to sedatives, as a way to explain why she’s always awake during their tests, but mostly as a precaution against further escape attempts that never come--she seems to be aware that the first attempt allowed them to prepare themselves against her. Still, she’s willing to make herself bruise and bleed fighting her restraints, and he learns not to let his guard down in her vicinity.

He’s forced to hold her down as they slide an absurdly long needle between the knobs of her spine, stained the color of iodine red, testing for some foreign chemical her brain scan revealed (and when he says ‘they’ it’s just him trying to forget he chose this for himself). The needle is pushed in until the tissue gives, and he’s grateful they gagged her because he can feel her tense up in pain but he can’t hear her screaming—he sleeps little enough at night as it is. He holds onto her because he’s seen just how strong she is and he’s afraid if she gets free right then she might cause herself the kind of harm not even their technology would be able to repair. 

Ironically, this is how he commits the crimes he wanted to prevent. The universe has a sense of humor, after all.

Every day the itch to throttle Brandon increases, proportional to his frustration at seeing how little he can do to make the torture stop, or at least make it marginally bearable. The problem is that every mark and every test, every needle and scan and tissue sample has a perfectly valid, entirely logical reason behind it if he thinks about it. It's really no wonder he's been trying very hard not to think. It has been an unsuccessful endeavor so far.

He makes himself sit with her, after, and he makes himself see her bruises and her silent anger. In his head, it might be penance. Shamefully, perhaps, he can’t always bring himself to talk about it.

"What else are they looking for?" he asks once, more to himself than her. To his surprise, she gives him an answer.

Olivia says, “Answers to questions they shouldn't be asking."

Perpetually, Peter is afraid that she is going to break, that the next time they put her on that table will be the last. It’s not the way he’d want to go, if they gave him the choice.

He thinks he could unlock the door for her, knock the guard out to give her a head start at least. He could blame it all on her when the inevitable questions arise, say she slipped her cuffs somehow. Sometimes he wants to. There are no cameras in this particular aisle.

When it happens, he reminds himself that she is the reason his world is falling apart at the seams. The reason there’s thousands of people whose lives were cut short by the Amber that is, by necessity, both their last resort and their first line of defense. He reminds himself that helping her would just make him the first in a long line of people at the other end of her gun. Peter doesn't think she is the type who would hesitate on the trigger.

The thought recurs nonetheless.

 

***

 

Her team feels wrong.

It’s not a question of efficiency, they have been trained with adaptability in mind, and though their casework no longer develops in leaps and bounds, Lincoln is enough of a brain by himself to carry them through the specifics without issue. It’s more about a lack of familiarity with the situation, she supposes.

Not Peter being an idiot, that is plenty familiar to all. Really, it’s more the notion that he’d choose to leave them behind to find the answers he so desperately wants.

Oh, she’s not stupid. She can at least guess at what this special assignment is about, even if the higher ups have done their best to keep the details from them (that alone makes her suspicious). Anyone with two brain cells and a working pair of eyes could connect the dots with little effort.

She imagines the knowledge of an alternate reality is the kind of existential question that would be life altering in some way or the other, for all parties involved. It has certainly been where she is concerned. Lately, she has begun to question herself, her choices, her sense of self. But that’s normal, that’s expected. At least that’s what she tells herself. The woman on the other side of the one-way glass is the person she could have been, had she turned left instead of right at some point in her life. The potential is there, in every choice Liv makes. She feels, in a way, entitled to the details of this other her.  

Unlike her, Peter doesn’t have the benefit of excuses. She has always respected, if not quite understood, his thirst for knowledge, the way his mind compares and contrasts and evaluates everything he sees. His curiosity is hardwired behavior, an intrinsic part of who he is. But there’s something childish in the way he so stubbornly refuses to let this go, like a terrier with a bone; something selfish about the way he made his choices without asking, perhaps not for their approval, but at least for their opinions on the matter.

If she were being honest with herself--not a routine arrangement by any means--she would admit that the crux of the matter is, perhaps, that she resents the fact that she’s never held his attention quite the way this woman can. It’s ugly, and petty, and superficial, and it’s a thought she refuses to allow.

It’s not a question of efficiency-- they caught the guy. It’s the feeling that something is missing when they go out for a drink at the end of the day, and Peter stays at his desk, looking over the specs and the interrogations to finalize the reports of a case they worked without his presence, instead of walking with them to the bar.

 

***

 

There is a diner on the corner across of the Division headquarters. It opens early and closes earlier still, when it’s dark but late no longer applies. Every first Saturday of the month, like clockwork, Peter finds himself sitting inside on a red vinyl booth and nursing a warm cup of tea, looking out the window without seeing, still half-asleep.

He likes the place. There is a welcoming quality to the atmosphere that reminds him of the cool, clear days of early spring; reminds him of the morning mist near the lake house he hasn't visited since the divorce, when he discovered his newfound health would allow him to swim in the lake without catching a fever, and that rowing all the way to the opposite shore would leave him sore for days on end, no matter how slow he went. The word for it would be _cozy_ , he supposes.

When the clock on the wall hits five past eight the door creaks open. The bell attached on top of it chimes to signal the arrival of the only other customer that will come inside before lunch time, today. Peter bookmarks the page he's on in the seemingly endless shape-shifter technical report that Walter was gracious enough to forward a week ago, and he rises to his feet.

Elizabeth Bishop has aged well. The wrinkles around her eyes and mouth suggest a lifetime of laughter and passions. There are strands of gray in her hair that she no longer bothers to cover, and that add to the air of elegance that she evokes even in clothes as plain as a knit navy sweater and light khaki pants.

"Peter," she greets, kisses his cheek and moves in for a hug that Peter is glad to return.

"It's good to see you, mom," he says, placing her bag beside his things, between their feet, under the table. It's a trick he's learned to make sure she won't pay when their check comes. "You wanna order something?" he asks. He's already calling for the single waitress to come by.

"Tea's alright," Elizabeth says, motioning to the small pot near the window. "And one of your muffins would be great," she adds when the waitress approaches, order pad in hand.

The waitress smiles. She's familiar with both of them, by now. "Of course ma'am. Any particular kind?"

"I'd love it if you had some of those banana muffins from the other time. They were delicious."

The waitress nods. "One banana muffin coming right up. Anything else for you, sir?"

"Nah, I'm alright. Thanks, Sue," Peter says as she goes, yawning.

"You look tired, honey. Are you sleeping ok?" Elizabeth asks after the waitress is well out of earshot. Direct, the way she's always been.

Peter laughs. He really is that transparent, sometimes. "I think tired is my new default, to be honest. Sleep has been…difficult, lately." An understatement. Every time he closes his eyes he's back in that white, white room, with only her screams to accompany him.

"Work?" Elizabeth questions, her hands around the cup of tea he's poured for her.

One of the many things he hates about his job is having to censor himself when talking to people. He understands the reasons why it would be foolish to discuss matters of national security with anyone outside his work circle, and he knows Elizabeth understands them just as well, but he's never felt comfortable lying to his mother, no matter how good at it he's always been. "Yeah. I--I'm working on a case right now. I can't actually talk about it, but it's just one of those that I can't leave at work no matter what I try, you know?"

She pauses to think his words over, savoring the warm tea she cradles between her palms. Elizabeth is one of the few people Peter knows that actually relishes the taste, without a drop of sugar to compensate for the natural bitterness. Eventually, she speaks. "I can't imagine how hard it must be for you and your colleagues, to go home and try to act like everyone else after seeing everything you see. You know how it surprised me that you decided to work in Fringe…" Considering your father, she doesn't say. She doesn't need to.

There was no one more surprised by that turn of events than Peter himself, but that's a story Elizabeth has never heard. If Peter gets his way, she'll never have to.  

"I know. But it's really not as bad as you might think. We're just cops, only our cases are a bit crazier. You learn to leave work at work when your shift ends, and it's useful."

"Except when you can't," Elizabeth points out, reminding him that she's been paying attention, and that she won't be easily distracted. She knows most of his tricks.

"Except when I can't," he admits, smiling.

"What is it about this one that's making it so hard?" she asks.

Peter sighs. "I'm…I don't know. I guess part of me thinks that…that we're pursuing the wrong leads. That maybe we're doing more harm than good pursuing anything at all. I can't stop thinking that, maybe, we're the bad guys this time. And I have to choose whether or not I want to be the kind of man that would do what I'm going to have to…I'm sorry, I know I'm being too vague for you to understand what I'm trying to say."

Elizabeth grabs his hand with her own, her elbows on the table as she leans in. “It doesn't matter. You have good instincts, Peter," she says, a conviction in her voice that he wishes he felt. "And whatever choices you make, you’re a good person. Don’t forget that.”

 

***

 

It is only after he speaks that Olivia registers his presence, the click of the door as it closes lost amid the myriad sounds of the building, the tapping of footsteps, the rattling of the pipes, the whisper of the air vents, the tick-tick-ticking of one clock or another, the deafening noise of machines all around. Her head feels as if it's splitting in half.

He says her name. She can tell by the tone of his voice that it's not the first time. He's crouching close. She can smell sweat and cologne, and if she manages to ignore the pain for a few seconds and focuses on his voice, she can make out the sound of his heart and the rushing of blood through his veins.

Olivia raises her head from her knees. She squints at the light that stabs at her eyes like a searing brand on the inside of her skull, wishes for darkness.  

Bishop seems to respond to her visible distress. He comes closer slowly, lowers his voice. "Olivia?" It's enunciated with care, vowels heavy and round, a soothing sound. Inquisitive without intruding. For a moment, it seems as though he might touch her. She's relieved when he doesn't.   

He says, "I brought you some clean clothes, if you want to change." Olivia notices the white fabric he carries, then. Remembers her state. She's been wearing the same iodine-stained hospital gown for the past couple of days, and little else.

It’s ludicrous really, that she would care about such things given what's happened, but the thought of clean clothes is a soft comfort. She almost lets herself be thankful.

Bishop places the scrubs on the bench by her knees, and reaches for the length of chain that binds her hands to each other without pulling on it. "Just so you know, there's a guard outside with a loaded gun. He's aiming at the door right now, in case you decide to break my neck when I unlock your handcuffs. I'd really appreciate it if you didn't, though, 'cause I happen to know the cleaning lady, and I wouldn't want her to have to clean up the mess, later."

It surprises her that he's even willing to take the risk. When she doesn't respond he simply unlocks the cuffs and backs away towards the shuttered glass pane to the side of the door. He turns around, giving her a modicum of privacy and space.

Moving hurts. Olivia lets the handcuffs fall on her lap, places them carefully on the ground so they don't make a sound, doesn't want to add to her misery. Her wrists are raw, red and aching. She can't even rub them to soothe them. Her knees pop when she stands. She turns around to face the back wall, and she strips.

The knot at her bare back is loose enough that it comes undone once she manages to get her hands out of the sleeves, the gown falling limp on the ground, by her feet. The thought of trying to escape passes briefly through her mind. Briefly. He's said himself, they expect her to try.

Olivia turns her head, and she catches him watching her reflection on the darkened glass. His gaze is stuck on her back, on the length of her spine and the angry bruise that's painted like a target in the space between the bottoms of her shoulder blades. His eyes flick away when they meet hers, something like shame on his face reflected back at her.

She dresses.  

Bishop turns around when she's done, doesn't pretend not to know. He slides to the ground, his back to the door, and waits for her to follow. She sits right across, away from the wall. The bruise hurts worse than it looks.

Eventually, he speaks, and the words stampede out of his mouth in something closer to bewilderment than anger. "You know, for the longest time, we thought Fringe events were natural disasters. We thought it was mother nature fighting back, after all the abuse. And we ran around--run around, I guess we still do--we run around closing vortex after vortex with a gas that solidifies around them, robbing thousands of people of the rest of their lives in the name of God and Country, and all that shit they tell you to believe in blindly at the Academy. And ok, I don't think there's an Agent out there who likes it, who doesn't get nightmares at night thinking about it, but it works. For the most part, it works, and lives are saved and people still live in relative peace, so we shield ourselves and our fragile little heads with this daily mantra where we tell ourselves that, in the end, it's just one more thing for the human race to power through, because everything ends, right? And then you…you come along crashing through that Opera house and suddenly everything I thought I knew becomes just one more lie to type into the files, and there's a cosmic war on that I didn't even know existed until a month ago."

Her head pounds, still, but the cadence of his voice, rising and falling, gives her something to focus on that makes all the other sounds recede. She doesn't know what to say. This universe and everything in it is as foreign to her as snow to someone who's never left the desert.  

Bishop sighs. "I'm sorry, you didn't need to hear all that."

"It's ok," she says. "It actually helps."

"Helps, how?" he asks, naked curiosity etched in his expression.

Olivia shrugs despite the pain. "Makes it more real, I guess. To know those things. Sometimes I'm not sure there's actually something out there beyond this hallway and whatever is in it." She knows it to be true as she speaks.

"Don't worry. You're not crazy yet," he says.

"How do you know?"

He thinks about it before answering. "Well, I'm real, for one. I'm here. I can tell you there's people outside, beyond this island, living their lives like they might end any minute, and they have no idea what goes on in here, don't know about you or me, or this facility because they don't want to. They wouldn't want the burden of that knowledge if we offered to pay them as they got it."

Olivia has to smile at that. "And that's exactly what a figment of my imagination might sound like, if it were trying to convince me to let go of what is real, don't you think?"

Bishop laughs, and she's never actually heard him laugh like that, if at all. "Yeah, ok. Not my best argument there. I guess it depends on your given definition of reality."

There is a knock on the door. Bishop stands as the tray slot in the door opens to the searching gaze of the guard outside.

"Everything ok, Captain?" the soldier inquires.

"It's fine Joe, just give me five minutes and I'll be out of your hair," Bishop says.

"Take your time, sir."

Bishop waits for the guard to move away before approaching her. He crouches beside her, fixes her with an evaluating stare that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.  "If you could get out of here…if you could just walk out the door…where would you go? What would you do?"

"I'd go home," she answers. Olivia doesn't even have to think about it.

He gives a short nod, like he expected the answer, and he reaches for the handcuffs, motioning to her hands before grabbing them. There’s a gentleness to the touch that she didn't expect; he's mindful of her wrists, makes sure his fingers never touch where it hurts the most. Bishop says, "I'm sorry, but I have to." Looks apologetic as the little metal teeth rattle and clank and the cuffs click closed on her skin. The weight of them has become familiar by now.

The surprise comes when he reaches into his boot and retrieves a folding knife. She tries to pull back, startled, but he holds her still by the front of her shirt. He whispers, "Relax. If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn't have waited this long. Stay still."

As she complies, he reaches for the waistband of her pants, folds it inside-out so the threads holding it together show. He fits the edge of the blade along the inch-long, horizontal seam that encloses the elastic holding her pants up, and he cuts. Once the seam is broken he returns the knife to his boot, fixing his pants over it.

"There's three things you need to know," Bishop says. "One: they managed to synthesize the chemical in your brain that they think helps you travel between universes without crumbling into the organically grown version of Dali's clocks. Two: because of number one, they won't need you for much longer. As far as I know, they will keep doing the tests for at least another week to see what other tricks they can squeeze out of you, but Brandon's looking excited at the prospect of taking your dissected brain to bed by the end of the month, at thelatest. Three: there is a gap of about ten minutes between guard shifts around eleven-oh-five p.m.  every day. There's bound to be less people around during that time. They can't deny you access to the washroom if you really need it and they've seen you drink a ton of water. My advice is, use that time wisely. You got all that?"

Olivia nods, unable or unwilling to find her voice.

"Good. _This_ , is a key," he says, slipping the simple, single toothed, silver handcuff key every law enforcement officer is issued with into the open seam of her white pants. "And I don't need to tell you what to do with it, I think. I will be sent after you. Know that, whatever happens, my help ends here."

The rest is on her.

 


	7. Exit Strategies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy crap, I wrote this. I finished this (at long, long last). As always, this is being published only due to the efforts of my beta, who, I think, reads minds.

The first guard drops with a blow of her hand. It's a dry, open handed smack against the man's throat, and Olivia feels the recoil of the vertebrae in his neck as they shift against the muscles between her thumb and forefinger. His body collapses. It falls backwards and then topples forwards, bending at the waist, face first against the sterile-white floors, in the sterile-white hallway of the observation wing where they've imprisoned her.

She picks up the fallen man's gun as she goes. "Sorry, Joe."

Guard number two shouts from the end of the hallway, shooting at her and reaching for the panic button on the wall that sends the alarms into a frenzy when he makes contact. Whatever advantage knocking out the scientists gave her, she's just lost.

Olivia ducks and crawls into the elevator beside her on elbows and knees. The guard's fallen body keeps the doors propped open, so she pushes his legs away and crouches against the corner, gun in hand as she reaches for the numbered panel on the metallic wall. She slaps at the lower numbers with the butt of the gun, the remaining guard’s bullets denting the surface of the closing doors. Her fingers shake with adrenaline.

The elevator lurches into motion, gears grumbling under stress as the brakes release before it starts to move smoothly downwards. Olivia pushes to her feet, her back against the wall. She thumbs the safety off her gun. The IV bag she tied around her calf sags, surgical tape and a haphazard knot the only things keeping it in place under the scrubs. Breathing is hard, her lungs burn.

When the loud ding announcing her arrival joins the cacophony of sound, she's ready to come out.

Olivia shoots the first agent where he stands in front of her, the doors halfway open. She squeezes her body through, catches him before he falls and hefts him up against her as a full-body shield, gun hand outstretched as she advances.

A fast sweep of the hallway on this floor reveals four agents running towards her in military greens, guns held high. They do not seem likely to stop before they reach her. Olivia ditches the body, firing off three rounds in quick succession in a poor attempt at cover fire as she dashes down the corridor.

She fells the next agent as she rounds the corner, shot in his shoulder, then his leg. Olivia cuts to her left, her movements deliberately abrupt. She pushes her way through the door of the emergency stairwell, grabbing the circulation map on the wall detailing protocol for emergency exits. She turns it over the right way as she jumps more than runs down the stairs, memorizing the routes as she goes, her feet flying beneath her of their own accord.

She pushes through onto the next hallway at full tilt, her shoulder absorbing the brunt of the impact against the emergency door. This particular hallway is dusty and gray all around but for the pipes lining the ceiling and the upper walls: red and yellow and blue. Her feet thump on the floor in a familiar staccato, each step jarring on knees that have not been put under such strain for however long she's been locked away. She turns the corner and sees a door, there at the hallway's end.

"DUNHAM! STOP!" It's Bishop's voice. It's thundering and urgent, and it would sound pleading if it weren't so angry. There is always something angry about him. In her mind his edges are jagged. Without the glimmer that he always carries she imagines him in monochrome, in whites and blacks and grays, edges bleeding red.

Olivia will not stop. The alarms wail in her ears, beat against her sternum. She feels mad--mad as in outraged at the universe at large, mad as in out of her mind. There is blood on her mouth where she bit her tongue when she landed at the bottom of the stairs. She will notstop, cannot stop.

She almost regrets the bullets as she shoots back without looking, hopes Bishop has enough sense to duck as she squeezes the trigger again, and then again and then again until clip and chamber are empty and she throws the gun on the ground.

 The explosion barely registers as she reaches the exit.

Barefoot, Olivia runs out into the night.

 

***

 

Peter ducks when he sees the blonde's gun swing blindly in his general direction, thinks _She's fucking nut_ s when his forearms hit the ground, knees skidding on the floor as he loses his balance under the forward momentum. His hands--gun included--press tightly on the back of his skull, and he turns his body into a twisted version of the fetal position, head against denim-clad knees.

 _Stupid, stupid, stupid._ It's a chant in the back of his mind, but he can't be sure who it's directed at. She didn't listen; the time he gave her was specific. He was not supposed to be on call when she ran.

The explosion hits him with the loving touch of a monkey wrench to the kidneys the moment he staggers to his feet. It throws him back against the corridor's side, where his temple scrapes against the wall. The world goes black for an instant and all Peter can hear is a steady ringing, his eyesight unfocused and his breathing ragged as he coughs up phlegm covered in ash.

Too late, he turns back, remembers Lincoln.

Lincoln, who'd been a step behind him as he closed in on the running blonde, Lincoln who cut the curve as the woman's careless shooting pierced a hole in the gas main on the far wall and set the air ablaze. Lincoln, who lies a mess of blackened limbs on the ground not 10 feet from him, a piece of overcooked meat vaguely reminiscent of a human being. Who stares back at Charlie hovering above his body and hollering for someone to do something, fast. All this with eyes that can't see, burnt white and lacking lids, moving side to side like eyes are wont to do in sleep. Lincoln's throat works to speak, perhaps to scream.

When Peter vomits, he tells himself it's the smell of burnt flesh and not the panic that does it. Not the guilt that drops like a rock to his gut.Not because _I did this_ is his only thought.

Time snaps back into place. Hands grab the front of his shirt, fisting the fabric tightly, pulling him upright before he has a chance to swallow the fear. The eyes to match the hands (eyes…don’t match hands? In colour or in function.) stare back at him, hostile and determined, mouth saying something he can't hear through the ringing in his ears and for the split second it takes him to recognize the red hair and the worn leather, he wants to put his hands around her neck and squeeze.

Dimly, he's aware of the medical personnel flooding the hallway, armed men still in pursuit. He shakes himself. Liv turns her face away to look ahead and then he's moving, trying to keep pace with her though he's not yet recovered his breath.

Peter crosses the threshold into the thin forest at a dead run, lungs burning, adrenaline the only thing keeping him upright. His eyes catch her figure in white, sprinting through the trees in a skewed line, glowing blue under the spotlights of the helicopters hovering above them.

He sees her at the edge as she stutters to a stop: arms flailing, body fighting for balance as inertia threatens to throw her off into the rocks below. She looks back, eyes wild, and, for one infinite second, Peter dares to think she's given up.

And then she takes a breath.

 The woman takes a step back, then two, then three. Her features still. Only the line of her body betrays her, desperate. The jump is graceless, if effective. She pushes off, running until she clears the ground, then plummets down. She disappears under the darkness and the brine.

He's barely fast enough to grab on to Liv before she jumps after her double, sharp crescent nails scraping the flesh off his wrists as she fires round after round into the pale wake of the waves beneath the cliff.

 

***

 

The jump takes the breath from her lungs, leaves a vacuum down at the bottom, in her guts. Ice water hurts her for a moment, an electric discharge running from the base of her brain to her frontal lobe, from fingers to toes. It makes her limbs heavy, shocked half-way to numb from the sudden cold. She feels like sinking. She can't help but float. Wants it to end. Wants only to rest.

Olivia remembers then: what she wants matters less and less every day.

_You were always the strong one._

Funny how six words make a difference. Walter is prone to repeating them like a prayer around her, pronounces each word with a conviction befitting one of the devout, the sounds precise and his voice preacher-deep. He will place a soft hand on her arm, his touch careful and light. Olivia will feel it like a brand. He will look at her with watery eyes made grave by the heavy bags underneath them, and he'll ask for her life as though she has not yet held it up for him to inspect, measure and weigh.

In truth, Olivia's more stubborn than strong. She endures. She pushes past the limits of what is healthy and sane, and keeps on moving because the fight is what she knows, what she's made for. She has always known she would die out there, on the job, alone. She thought she was at peace with the prospect by this point.

She was wrong. Olivia doesn't want to go out like this, doesn't want to die a universe away from the people she's loved. Doesn't want to drown under the weight of things she was never responsible for, the sins of the men who brought her here. She refuses to let herself be a victim again.

The currents fight her, move her around, the weight of her clothes drags her down. One arm and then the other, over and then under, again and again--if she thinks only of the motions, concentrates, everything else falls away. It's her and the water, and nothing else. She swims towards the city, towards the cluster of lights in the dark.

The sky is lighter when she reaches the shore, more indigo than black. A drop of water mixed in with the india ink on the horizon's line, washing out the dark. Olivia crouches by the rocks, halfway under the rotting wood of the docks, barefoot and shaking. Listening, she hears footsteps approaching, the wooden boards creaking under the weight of the person moving on the dock above her.

Looking up towards the sound, Olivia catches sight of the walker through a gap in the wood. It's a guard, his tan, heavy-duty boots thumping steadily as he crosses the pier. The man is heavy-set, dressed in army fatigues, wearing a gun on his hip. The holster is clipped to his belt, the gun's grip angled forward. Water drips down on her already drenched shape, tapping softly on her forehead.

 _You were always the strong one._ It echoes in her ears, distorted by the rumble of the waking city beyond the shore. By the shivering, and the aching, and her chattering teeth. There might yet be some truth to the pronouncement.

 

***

 

"You should head home, kiddo." Charlie rests a heavy hand on her back, warm. Liv shakes her head, runs her fingers through uncharacteristically messy hair. She hasn't left the room since Lincoln was rushed into the nanite chamber, seven hours ago and counting (at least according to his watch--God knows it's felt much longer than that).

Except for that half-hour when Peter came into the room and Charlie somehow managed to make her leave before they blew something up with just the tension between them.

If he squints, Charlie can see Lincoln's outline on the frosted glass, too still to be naturally asleep. He suspects the glass is clouded only to spare them the sight. Clearly, whomever had that idea has never had to be where they are now. Having to imagine it, piecing the image together from fragments of frenetic memories distorted by fear and adrenaline, is worse; in his mind's eye he sees his partner's charred body, pared down until he looks less a man and more a badly wrapped bag of bones, now neatly arranged inside the half-cylinder of the chamber. Dehydrated, his skin a collection of blisters and cracks stretched tight over raw muscle, sluggishly bleeding as much blood as thick, pungent pus.

 There are bags under Liv's eyes, a sickly pale hue to the rest of her that worries Charlie--rage, and lack of sleep, and the frustrated tears she must have shed after making sure there was no one to witness. She seems to be wrapped in a sense of desperation that he can't bring himself to associate with her.

Go home, he tells her, but she won't think of it, refuses to hear it.

"No, I can't leave him here," she says. "What if he wakes up and he's alone in there?"

"He's not going to wake up for a while, Livy," Charlie says, tries to knock some sense into her. "The drugs they used to put him under, he'll probably still be asleep by the time he's all healed up. You know that. You being dead on your feet won't help him. And it won't help us catch her either."

Liv ignores him, of course, but it's not like he was expecting any different. Not now. "Any news?"

"No, not yet." Charlie sighs. He tries to reassure her. "For all we know she's drowned. Maybe one of your bullets hit her."

Liv shakes her head. "They would've found a body by now." Her tone is final. "We should be out there. We should be in the field, helping, not stuck here twiddling our thumbs. Why are we still on standby?"

Charlie shrugs. "Those were the orders. Apparently, we're too valuable to let loose without a concrete lead to follow." Reacting any other way would just increase their collective level of frustration. At least one of them should keep a level head in this situation, and by the look of things he's going to have to volunteer for the position.

Liv scoffs. "Is that what Peter told you?"

"Hey, easy there." Despite the severity of the situation, he has to fight not to roll his eyes. They can be so childish sometimes. At least with Lincoln, animosity almost always translates to teasing (to flirting, really, but he can't say that out loud). With Peter, it is always real, and it is always reciprocal. Even if Peter is more manipulative than dominant in that same you-will-bow-down-to-me way that Liv prefers, they're too much alike to work together well without butting heads every once in a while. "Do you really think he wouldn't tell us if he knew something? C'mon, Liv, it's Peter. When has he ever let us down?"

"Oh, I don't know, have you been here for the past month?" Of course. What was he thinking? Charlie should've expected her to react like that. There's not a single person on earth that would dare call jealousy reasonable.

 _And what am I supposed to say to that?_ Sometimes he wonders if she realizes all the ways in which they're all selfish, unfair. If the difference between them is that she chooses to own it. Most of the time he's sure that she knows he envies her for it.

Liv breaks the silence. "You know what I can't stop thinking about?" she says, her voice a whisper. "There's a universe out there where I do this without blinking. I turn a human being into kindling and I just keep running. What kind of person does that make me, Charlie?"

"One who needs to sleep, kid." Charlie crouches beside the plastic chair she's taken for herself. "She's not you. You said that to Peter, remember? More than once. Don't torture yourself over things you couldn't possibly control."

"I know what I said, but... Charlie, we're genetically identical. Maybe Peter is right, and I'm just kidding myself." She points at Lincoln. "Would I do that?"

Charlie scratches at the scabs on the crook of his arm. "You know, self-doubt? Not a good look on you." She chuckles, but it's half-hearted. She is not in the mood to be comforted, so he does not try. Instead, he tells her the truth: "I think, if she's really that much like you, this is going to be harder than we thought."

She frowns. "Why's that?"

"Because, Liv, you'd do anything to survive."

 

***

 

Living relatively far from the Division, Farnsworth has made a habit of storing her pressed uniform inside her personal compartment in the women's locker room, a space one level below the situation room and adjacent to the gym provided for the agents' use. It is perceptibly more comfortable to travel to and from headquarters in clothes that will not attract attention wherever she goes. For her, social interaction often results in awkward situations that she has since learned to avoid.

This is not to say that she is not proud of her position; she loves her job. She enjoys being useful, being a part of something greater than herself. In the grand machinery that keeps their world steadily orbiting around the sun, Farnsworth is insignificant, but here, in the Division, she has become an integral part.  

That is why, every morning, she makes a ritual out of dressing in the patterned material that marks her as an agent. Why she takes care that every crease is perfect and her belt sits on her hips at the right height, makes sure that her collar is even before stepping out into the hallways. Why she makes sure her hair is tucked neatly inside her spotless black-and-red beret.

She is uniquely suited for the work she does, and it is refreshing to find a place where she is appreciated for the abilities that make her special, instead of being singled out as an object of collective shame.

Once Farnsworth has changed into appropriate clothing and is ready to begin, she makes her way through the building and into the bullpen. She walks up the steps and through the glass doors of her boss' office, her steps measured but sure. It is not unusual for her to be requested at headquarters at odd hours. A Looker's schedule is bound to be erratic, considering that information never sleeps.

She stops at the edge of the room, awaiting acknowledgement. Having read the debrief that the Colonel uploaded for her, she is not surprised by Captain Bishop's presence in the room. It is the absence of his remaining team members that strikes her as odd. Finding them apart from each other during work hours used to be a rare occurrence, before Captain Bishop's special assignment, and she would have guessed that they would return to those same familiar patterns after the events of the previous night, try to find comfort in companionship like they have done so many times.

It seems that her assumptions had been wrong.

Today, Agent Dunham and the Captain appear to be avoiding each other's company at all costs, and Agent Francis' somber mood and uncomfortable looks give her the impression that he feels as though he's being stretched so tight between the two that he'll end up splitting down the middle.

From the outside, it is easy for Farnsworth to see where the complication lies. It would be simpler, she thinks, if they all stopped covering their fears with anger and a misplaced sense of guilt, and instead remembered that they have always worked best as a team. She would suggest it, but it is not Farnsworth's job to intrude, and so she keeps her distance and waits until her input is requested.

"Agent Farnsworth, please come in." Phillip Broyles waves her forward. The set of his jaw and the rigidity of his posture underline his displeasure at the situation, telegraph a need for caution and tact.

"Colonel, sir," she acknowledges, stepping forward until she is standing by the edge of the Colonel's desk. Captain Bishop, who did not seem to have registered her presence until the Colonel called out, greets her with a nod of his head that she returns. He slumps on the leather chair beside her, his furrowed brow casting long shadows over his eyes.

"Agent, as I'm sure you're aware of, the Olivia Dunham from the other side escaped late last night from the facilities under Liberty Island. I would like you to run diagnostics, considering the probability of her reaching the mainland unharmed." The Colonel points to the side of his desk, where a screen has been prepared for her to use. She nods acknowledgement without meeting his gaze and takes her place beside him, spreading her palms over the streams of data gathered.

Numbers are easy. They ebb and flow in patterns beholden to logic, and all the answers are singular. Mathematics are linear and comprehensible in a way that people rarely are.

The men's faces expectant before her, Farnsworth translates. "Based on Agent Dunham's psychological profile and accounting for a minimal percentage of natural variation, the probability of the prisoner successfully swimming to shore is of twenty-three point eight-seven-five percent. The differences between her universe and ours will take her some time to comprehend, and her lack of proper identification will make public transportation virtually inaccessible, although given her status as a fugitive there is a thirty-seven-percent chance that she will steal someone else's _Show Me_. There is a twelve-point-seven-two percent probability that she will seek refuge in a highly populated area, and a sixty-seven-percent chance that she will attempt to escape back to her universe in the same manner that she arrived in ours."

Colonel Broyles turns to the other man in the room, raises his eyebrows. "Bishop?"

The Captain sits still for a moment, thinking her words over. "It's Olivia Dunham. I think twenty-three-percent is enough to be pretty fucking certain she's still kicking out there." He grits his teeth. "Obviously, we can't put out a Fringe Alert. We can't get a BOLO out to NYPD either, because they would all recognize her and The Secretary has made it clear that this incident going public would be...unacceptable." Farnsworth notes that he can't quite keep the disdain out of his voice. But then again, he may not be trying. "As for her going back, Research and Development's determined that she can somehow compensate for the difference in vibrations between universes, which is what allows her to survive the trip from one side to the other, but she'd still need a device powerful enough to open a door she can step through. We could start by keeping an eye on local labs equipped with particle accelerators. It's probably the most accessible device on the market that qualifies."

Colonel Broyles sighs. "Agent Farnsworth, recommendations?"

A call comes through on the Colonel's line, and Farnsworth doesn't get a chance to answer that. The Colonel straightens, listening intently. "Are you absolutely certain?" he asks, tapping at his screen without looking at her or the Captain. "Make sure the scene is undisturbed, do you understand? I don't wanna see a single strand of hair from your people, Sergeant. I'll have a team over immediately." The Captain perks up at that.

"Bishop," the Colonel continues. "Get your team together. DoD Military just found a dead guard at the docks. It seems our fugitive was caught on tape. Agent Farnsworth, I'm gonna need traffic patterns running within a ten mile radius of the Ferry station for Liberty island, stat."

Farnsworth nods. "Yes, sir," comes as an afterthought as she compiles the data. The rest of the world becomes background noise, an ambient soundtrack.

Peripherally, she is aware of the Captain hurrying out of the room.

 

***

 

 This morning, Henry Higgins finds himself on the business end of a gun, and the demented lady behind it. He wishes he could say it is a brand new experience.

She slides into the back of the car, fluid like someone in a hurry, and he thinks at first that it's a nurse wanting to get home at the end of her night shift. It barely registers that he's nowhere near a hospital, he only notices the white of the scrubs at the edges of his vision. Everything is fuzzy in the morning, and besides: it's not polite to stare at clients--frankly, he cares only that they pay before leaving the taxi. Most of the time he barely even glances back.

"Drive," she tells him, and he swears he can hear her teeth chatter as she speaks. _Funny_ , he thinks, _it's not that cold_.

Because everyone forgets, Henry says, "I'm gonna need your Show Me," and he reaches back for it. Next thing he knows, the cold barrel of a Bell 76 is saying hello through the Plexiglas divider of his taxi.

"What's your name?" Demented Lady says, unblinking, from his back seat. He puts his hands up in surrender. Henry's done many things in this cab over time, most of them of questionable legality even by the loosest of standards, but nerves of steel are one thing he's never had.

"Henry," he tells her, finally taking her in through the reflection in the rear-view mirror. The woman is a mess; there are cuts and scratches all over her arms and face. He notices then that her scrubs are wet, sticking to her in patches. The cold morning air's not doing a great job of drying her. There's a hospital tag around her left arm. _Demented_ might just be right, this time.

"Okay, Henry. It's simple. I have a gun that I will not hesitate to use, and I need you to drive." She looks like she means it. There is something familiar about her. The voice, or maybe the shape of her eyes.

Henry lowers his hands, clutches the steering wheel until his knuckles are white and tries not to piss his pants. Beads of sweat run down his back. He keeps wondering what it is about him that nut jobs like so much. "A--Alright. Where to?"

"Just drive." She grits her teeth, and Henry turns the key in the ignition. He nods. Performing at gun point is one of the few things he excels at.

Henry drives.

 

***

 

The effort of holding the gun up without visibly wavering feels inhuman at 6 in the morning after swimming to shore, dressed in drenched medical scrubs and stolen boots 2 sizes too big for her feet. Olivia's thankful that the sight of the blued metal gleaming in the morning sun is enough for the cabbie to do as he's told.

She lowers the weapon as he puts his foot to the pedal, the car rolling smoothly away from its spot under the bridge. Olivia slides down in the backseat, rests her head back against the soft, worn cushion of the headrest, keeping one eye on the cabbie as the other scans the city outside. Her heart hasn't stopped jackhammering at the base of her throat; she feels vaguely nauseous.

They drive for a while. The taxi makes its way into the city proper, winding through alleys and roads that are all unfamiliar, their progress slowing down as the suburbs give way to commercial areas and traffic increases. Every so often, she'll feel the cabbie's eyes on her through the rear view mirror, his anxiety a living blanket covering every surface on the inside of the car.

"Are you sick?" He speaks, so out of the blue that it startles her, and she realizes she's drifted, switched her thinker off to rest, stare into space. She's so tired...so tired. It will get her killed if she keeps it up.

Olivia looks at his eyes through the rear view mirror, his pupils blown wide. The man is terrified. He must think her crazy-- a woman in wet scrubs, with a gun, making him drive without a given destination. He may be right. Olivia's felt crazy for a very long time. When she manages to sleep she still wakes up in the middle of the night, wondering if she's finally awoken from the nightmare of her life. No luck in that department, so far.

There's something like worry in the details of the driver's expression as he waits for her to answer, and Olivia really needs him to cooperate, is prepared to use force if she has to, but for the moment he's done nothing but be in wrong place, at the wrong time. She can't fault him for that. She knows the feeling.

"No," she answers, doesn't say anything more about it because she's had some experience dealing with people whose lives are not b-movie shit storms 25 hours a day, every day, and she's pretty certain he wouldn't believe her. The less he knows the less he'll be able to say when they inevitably question him later.

There's a photograph clipped to the sun visor that hangs down over the top quarter of the windshield, blocking the glare of the morning light. It catches her eye. Olivia sees a beautiful woman, dark skin gleaming in the sunlight, black ringlets of hair cascading over her shoulders, a laughing toddler in her lap that looks exactly like her. "Is that your family?" she asks.

"Y-yeah. My wife and daughter. Look, I don't care what you do, or who you are, I just don't want any trouble."

"Don't worry, Henry," Olivia tells him. "Nothing will go wrong for you, as long as you do exactly as I say."

When the city as a whole is awake enough that store fronts start opening up, she makes him stop across a row of low-end shops.

"What now?" The cabbie asks, hands tight around the wheel. He's pale, the side of his face damp with fear-sweat.

Olivia's sorry for him, she really is. But she's not sorry enough to chance the possibility of getting caught once more. "Now, I'm gonna need your I.D...your _Show Me_ ," she adds, remembering what he called it when she jacked his cab.

Henry nods, and she sees his hands shake as he reaches for the console to remove the card. The plastic is warm when she takes it from him, a badly photographed, younger version of her driver looking back at her from the picture on the right side. He looks oddly cheerful. She reads the information on the card, commits it to memory with a glance.

"Okay, Henry," Olivia says, putting an edge to her voice that'll make it hard for him to mistake what she says for anything but the threat she means it to be. She hates herself for it. "I want you to go into that store and I want you to buy me some clothes. I now know where you and your family live. If you do anything reckless, if you contact anyone, I assure you, trouble _will_ find you."

She sees Henry swallow. He says, "I understand," and exits the cab. In his haste, he leaves the keys in the ignition.

Alone, Olivia lets herself crumble. She slumps forward, her forehead leaning up against the divider; she runs her hands up her face and through the mess of her hair. Her eyes water, but she will not cry. Elbows on knees, Olivia closes her eyes, breathes deep, in and out until her fear recedes, stands back to take its place at the back of her mind, always watching for a window to peek through unannounced.

If only fear sufficed. Escaping wasn't so much a plan well executed as it was a rare stroke of luck and a mad dash. She saw her opportunity and took it. And she wouldn't exactly say it’s all running smoothly but she's neither dead nor incapacitated yet. If the universe is indeed a sequence of patterns that repeat, like Walter believes, chances are something bad is coming her way.

Where does she go now?

Henry doesn't take long at all in coming back, a plastic bag in hand that he pushes toward her through the space in the divider once he's seated back inside the cab. Once again, she tells him to drive.

 In the bag, she finds a black shirt, black pants, a dark jacket. Without pausing to think on the value of modesty, Olivia changes in the backseat of the moving taxi, feels the driver studiously ignoring her in favor of the road ahead. The shirt's a little tight and the pants a little loose, but after wearing hospital scrubs for a little over a month, anything will do.

The Cortexiphan IV bag still presses firmly against her calf, and she's thankful that it did not come off during her flight. She almost chuckles at that. Olivia's wanted it out for so long now, that knowing that everything that comes next depends on the drug in her brain and some emotion she hasn't yet deciphered makes her want to laugh out loud. _Oh, the irony_.

Olivia hopes, if there's some higher power watching, he's enjoying himself. She's put in a lot of effort for the joke to end up falling flat on its face.

Thinking that, it occurs to her she's found her answer at last: Walter may not be here, but there is one other man that she can blame for all the pain and the fear. One other man that can help. More accurately, his company.

Olivia taps the driver on his shoulder, feels him jump a little at the touch. He looks back at her. "I need you to take me to 655 18th street, just off 10th avenue," she tells him.

If Massive Dynamic is hell, Olivia will sell her soul to get there.

 

***

 

Trouble found Henry when he was 18 years old, and it keeps coming back for regular visits. The only thing he has ever been good at is driving this cab. Pushing the pedals, changing gears as he watches the city pass him by. It's more than just his job. His entire history is written on the surface of this steering wheel, in the burn of hot tires against the asphalt and the running of the taximeter. Driving gave him a room to sleep in when he needed it, and it's fed his family through the good times and the bad.

It took him a long time to straighten out his life. Doing the things Henry used to do just to eat every night...getting out wasn't easy. You can't just go over and pay a visit to the head honcho of the local mafia ring and say, _hey, so, I'm thinking of quitting 'cause I'm kinda tired of running your laundered money on the back of my cab, and y'know, my girlfriend's expecting and she's threatened to leave me for the third time this month. I'd really like the car to stop smellin' like the dead body your goons dumped in the trunk a couple of weeks back before the baby's born, yeah?_

For five years he's lived a clean life. Five years of working odd hours seven days a week to make ends meet, but it's time and money that Henry's proud of, time he's done honest work, money he's earned. He's proud that he can give his little girl some of the things he lacked as a child. A proper education at the very least. She's already so smart. As a father, how can he risk losing that?

Henry slows down, taking pressure off the accelerator as they reach her destination, bringing the car to a slow stop on the sidewalk by MLK Memorial Park. It's a beautiful day out.

In the mirror, Demented Lady frowns. "Why'd you stop?"

"Ma'am...this is it," Henry says, hesitant, afraid of her reaction. "Where you said to go: 18th street, 10th avenue." He sees her look back out the window, her eyes frantically scanning the park like whatever she's looking for will materialize if she looks hard enough at the right time.

A desperate, "No," leaves her mouth, more an exhale than anything else. She seems to deflate. It is not the kind of reaction Henry expected from someone so willing to point a gun at his face, but then madness is rarely predictable.

The blonde opens the cab's door, steps out. She's a few feet away when she turns back, like she's just remembered him sitting in the car. "Give me the keys."

Henry thinks, _not my cab, please, not my cab,_ but he turns the engine off and drops the keys into her outstretched hand. She says, "Don't do anything stupid," voice hard, and walks down the gentle slope into the open park.

She stops there, at the center. Looks up. The sun hits the back of her head, the golden strands of her hair blazing red. It hits him, then, why she looks so familiar.

He's got a call to make.

 

***

 

Sergeant Michael P. Eldritch died of a broken neck. The corpse is untouched when they get to the scene, as per Broyles' request. If it weren't for the odour and the stillness and the gray tint of the skin, the gelatinous consistency of the eyes....yeah, no, he looks dead. Nothing else to see there.

 The only thing out of place aside from the obvious is that his feet are bare. Gallows humour, or whatever they call it, but there's an aspect of comedy to the sight that Peter's hard-pressed to define. Dead man, fatigues impeccable even as his body rots on the ground, but not a sock in sight.

There's probably room for some deeper insight into the nature of mortality or something like that, but he's not going to bother right now.

Lincoln would get it if Peter shared. If he could be here with the rest of them.

From what Peter can see as he crouches over the body, it's a clean fracture, separating the spine at the second cervical vertebra from the top down, right at the base of the skull. She must have taken him by surprise, attacked him from behind. Eldritch was gone in a flash, didn't make a sound.

Those will probably be some of the words his wife will hear from the military liaison sent to offer condolences later today. Right after the man introduces himself and drops the bad news on her, he'll mention how Eldritch died instantly, how he felt no pain. He might go into detail, explain that the corpse in question was lucky, that a swift end is not always the case with this particular cause of death. Like it's meant to reassure her.

What does it matter that he felt nothing as he died? Dead is dead is dead. Peter doubts the how and when will make much difference to those that will miss him. The point is that to Military Command this is not another husband who won't be going home by the end of today, just one more number to add to the statistics. Why should they care, when there's a thousand other pawns filing up behind the yellow line for the position?

There are never any pamphlets at recruitment centers explaining that war is a game devised by bored mathematicians, that they are all zeroes to the left, worthless, easily replaced.

His knees pop as he stands up, turns in place, surveying the scene from his position. It's more than a mile from the harbour to Liberty Island, if he's measuring in a straight line. From here, the statue's only a golden miniature interrupting the pale blue slash of the horizon.

How a woman (malnourished and abused) who's been swimming against the currents of the Hudson River all night can sneak up on a trained military man, and still be strong enough to snap his neck like it's a pack of saltines is the question to ask.

Charlie approaches from the control room, features set in a grim mask. "You find anything?"

Peter shakes his head. "It's clean. There's some tracks making a path from a spot under the dock up to that low rise over there, where she must have made the climb, but that's about it. How's the security footage?"

"I think you should see for yourself." From his tone, Peter can tell it doesn't bode well for them.

Red's waiting when they walk into the room. Being around her feels like driving into a wall; he can feel her staring holes on his back. Out of them all, she's the only one who was spot on when she placed the blame on him, and him alone. Peter understands she's done it on instinct, that the part of her that resents his rank finds in him the most appealing of targets. She's always thought she'd do a better job in command.

 Peter's never contradicted the notion--he agrees with her, for the most part. He would trade places with her in an instant, no questions asked, but it is what it is, and there's nothing to do for that now.

He doesn't want to know what she'd do if she knew the truth.

The time stamp of the attack is four fifty-seven AM. For the first few moments, the CCTV recording is exactly what Peter expected to find. Eldritch appears in grainy black and white, his indistinct male figure gaining definition with his approach. Walking, he takes a long drag from the crumbling cigarette butt in his hand before he blows a steady stream of smoke into the air. Peter sees the man turn to look back at the helicopter lights lighting up the Island in the distance, his posture entirely relaxed. And then he's being attacked.

Their fugitive sneaks up on him from behind, coming from the left, garb wet and hanging heavy on her wiry frame, the too-white material a blaring visual alarm in the sea of grays and blacks of her surroundings. Without preamble, she grabs his head in a firm grip and twists. By necessity, the footage is comprised of images without sound, but Peter can feel the crunching noise echoing in the spaces between hammer and anvil and drum nonetheless.

As the body falls lifeless to the ground, the lights flicker in the background and the video fades out into a barrage of rolling static that turns the already barely defined shapes to noise. Seventy-three seconds later video resumes. It shows Eldritch's corpse on the ground, exactly as they found him, though Peter imagines at that point it was considerably warmer.

Their fugitive is nowhere in sight.

Peter curses under his breath, gives himself a moment before rewinding the video to the last clear shot of her approaching the Sergeant from behind. His head pounds. "Is this everything? Where there no more cameras around?"

"That's the only one," Charlie says. "Guess they didn't think they'd need any more, with a working pair of eyes on the payroll and the harbour patrols."

Peter turns to Red, forces himself to meet the unwavering stare. "Did first responders see anything other than what we found? Foot prints maybe? Something she left behind?"

"No, just the body and this. Jimenez is taking their official statements around the back, if you wanna waste some more time on that." There's nothing teasing about the bite in her tone.

 "So we're fucked then." He looks away.

"Yeah, whose fault is that, _Captain_?" Red again.

"Okay, that's enough." Peter grits his teeth but keeps his voice low--shouting is not an indicative of power, this is not going to get any less fucked up if he adds a few decibels to the volume. He stands up straight, steps forward, into her, invades her space until he's close enough that she has to tilt her head towards him to keep up all that ominous glaring. It's a knee-jerk reaction to the burn of her words, to the echo of them constricting his windpipe, pressing down against his chest, from the inside. "You got something to say to me, you say it, but the passive-aggressive bullshit is driving me _insane_."

 Charlie tenses up behind him, inhales sharply, moves to intervene. Peter puts his arm out, keeps him away with a hand on his chest. "Don't."

 He wants this to happen, he realizes. Wants her to chew him out, because maybe then this tension that's been building between them will dissipate and they'll go back working order, and maybe he'll feel less a coward if he forces himself to stand there and take the punishment she's determined to mete out.

But things are never as easy as that. What is sure to be Red's explosive response is cut short by the ringing of his earcuff shattering the moment. It isn't a time when Peter can afford not to answer, so he sighs, closes his eyes, and steps back. "Bishop speaking."

The voice on the other end of the line is one Peter wasn't expecting, not on this number and certainly not now. Henry's words come in a rush, barely intelligible. "Henry--Henry slow down. Say that again."

The driver is quick to repeat, his voice stilted, like he's speaking through his teeth. "I said, what the fuck is your partner doing pointing a gun at me from the back seat?"

"Partner? What partner?" He frowns, looks back at Liv, at Charlie beside her. His eyes widen. "Henry, _what partner?_ "

"The hot one." Henry answers, like it should be obvious. "You know, red hair? Except she's blonde now, why is she blonde? And why is she pointing a gun at me and threatening my family? Is this your idea of a joke? Bishop, what the hell is happening?"

"Okay, okay, calm down." Peter says, forcing himself to sound normal, to not aggravate the driver's evident panic over the comm. "Where are you? And where is she?"

"She made me drive her to MLK park. At least that's the address she gave me, but...I think she was expecting something else. I'm parked by the entrance, she's standing in the middle of the lawn right now looking kinda lost, but I don't think I have a lotta time, bro...Bishop, you gotta help me."

Peter grabs a hold of Charlie, mutes the call. "Call HQ, tell them to track the current position of a New York Taxi employee. Cab's registered to Henry Arliss Higgins. We're also gonna need a tactical team." Charlie raises an eyebrow but does just that, stepping out of the cramped control room and dragging Red behind him by the arm. When she looks back from the door he tells her, "Promise you can punch me later." It gets him a smile, all teeth and no warmth.

With the press of a button he's back to the call. "Henry, listen to me. I can't explain just now, but she's not thinking straight and she's dangerous. I'm tracking your position right now, and I'm gonna do everything in my power to get her into custody before she hurts anyone, but I need you to keep her calm. And _do not_ , under any circumstances, let her leave that cab. Take her wherever she wants you to, do whatever she says, but do not let her leave the cab. Understood?"

"Yeah, yeah, just...hurry up, man. Shit, gotta go, she's coming up." Henry ends the call and the last few syllables get cut off, but his meaning is clear. Peter exhales through his mouth, runs a hand through his hair.

There's a moment in the video where the camera catches her figure in profile, her eye fixed to a point off the screen, pupil reflecting light like a cat's, right before she attacks the dead man. It's the moment frozen on screen right now.

The sad part? Peter made the mistake of getting close enough to care, had sincerely hoped she'd be able to get out unharmed. Well...unharmed beyond the damage they'd already inflicted. Maybe with her sanity still within her grasp. He wasn't expecting the results to be as colorful as this.

In the newness and chaos of it all, he'd forgotten for a moment that desperation makes monsters out of each and every one of us, forgotten that war is a uniquely human invention, that one of its many faces is deception. Destruction is something humanity instinctually excels at.

He's got to make sure he doesn't forget that again.

 

***

 

It's gone. Her way home is gone.

The sign by the trees on the side of the road informs her that she's entering the Martin Luther King - Eldridge Cleaver Memorial Park. The path of hexagonal cobblestones fitted together, loose in some places, leads her down a slight slope into a flat expanse of grass interrupted only by a fountain at the very back, water gleaming under the morning light. The grass is a deep, vivid green beneath her feet, recently trimmed so that it stands only a couple of inches above the dark soil underneath.

It's late enough that she's not the only one here. There's people having their morning coffee, reading the paper, sitting on the dry patches on the fountain's edges, pigeons milling around, pouncing on scraps of breakfast as they fall. A couple of runners, resting by one of the benches lining the sidewalk, an old man walking his dog and a young one doing yoga on a mat a few meters away, on the grass, his body contorting into one pose or another.

Olivia looks around without seeing but still notices all of this, mind stuttering on the absence but her body moving. There is no sign there was ever a building here, no Massive Dynamic to take her home.

As long as she stays in this universe getting caught is only a matter of time, there is no doubt in her mind about that. She can run and hide--she might even last a while if she tried, she's always been good at disguises--but eventually, Bishop is going to find her (it's his job, she won't blame him for it when he does). He's going to drag her back into that empty, white cell to be dissected at Brandon Fayette's earliest convenience, and her world will go down the drain like waste, like the rest of her.

If Walter were with her she'd ask him to build her a time machine, something that would let her go back to days that seemed longer and simpler. She'd look at her younger self with the pity she knows she hates, urge her to become someone else, warn her of the heartache and the pain that lies ahead. Of course, these are all fantasies, a fever dream. Not that Walter couldn't build it, she's sure he's done it in his sleep a thousand times. But she's stubborn enough that she knows: she chose her path a long time ago. No words will change it (no words will change her).

She can't really bring herself to regret it.

A loud mechanical drone sneaks into the background of her thoughts. Olivia looks up at the sky but it's deja vu that blinds her and not the light. She knows, in her gut, she's been here before. She gets these moments constantly; she'll be doing something ordinary and every day, like chasing bug monsters or shooting up in the tank so Walter can dig around inside her mind, always looking for something that Olivia is pretty sure is no longer there, and she'll feel it: this sense of foreboding, of having witnessed these events in some other time, some other place, through the eyes of someone that feels familiar, yet strange. Olivia wonders if there is a scientific explanation for that.

The source of the noise is a zeppelin, flying low above the block, a silver beast rearing its head over them all. Rationally, she knows she'd remember seeing something of the sort before, but her gut is screaming recognition despite the empty space where the memory should slide into place, between the rows of minutes and hours and days that she can't forget. It barely rates on the scale of strange, but it reinforces the psychedelic taste permeating the air.

This world is not her place. The grass so green, the wind whipping up her hair into a frenzy across her face, the sun so bright it's burning white spots in the back of her eyes, the blimp momentarily obscuring the sky. It's dizzying. She's pretty sure she sways on her feet. Her thoughts swim around her head like fish too big for the bowl they've been dumped in.

"I'm stuck," Olivia mutters, for nobody's hearing but her own.

How did she get here? Here, to this world; here to this park. Here to this wreck of a woman that's lost control of her life. Was it always like this?

Eventually, the blimp moves on. The familiar din of a waking city floods her ears again, sounds too many and too frequent to tell apart, constant white noise that her ears easily ignore. Silence falls. It brings her some measure of clarity, at last.

She can't stay here. She's been a sitting duck for long enough.

 Olivia's the living blueprint for a weapon. Possibly flawed beyond repair, in her case, but prototypes can be deconstructed, perfected. The monster in her brain could destroy worlds, if replicated. She can't let them take it--they already know too much. If they chase her, at least she'll be buying her people some time. Surely, they know by now that she's a lost cause. The edges of the gun dig against her spine. She hopes Walter had a plan b somewhere in the back of his mind.

The cab is waiting by the sidewalk where she left it, the driver watching her ascent with that air of old, familiar dread that settles when you get used to facing a reality that tends to be violent in driving the point home: bad luck is not something that can be outrun. If Nick were here, she'd blame the sense of kinship she feels for the man on his abilities.

She throws the keys at him without really looking when she reaches the duck-yellow door, slides into the leather backseat but doesn't say a word. Where can she go?

 The driver turns to her, his face peeking through the space in the divider. "Are you okay? You're lookin' a little pale."

"I'm fine." The words come out wooden, styrofoam fake. From the look the driver gives her, she surmises that she's gotten to the point where she can't even put on a decent façade. There's something different about him. The fear's still there, but there's something else. Understanding. Olivia covers her face with her hands.

"Right. Look, I don't wanna intrude or anything, but whatever's going on...it'll pass, if you know what I mean."

Olivia chuckles but there's no amusement in the sound. She supposes he's trying very hard to keep himself on her good side. "I very much doubt that, Henry," she tells him, not unkindly. "Why don't you drive?"

The driver looks away, starts the car without a second glance towards her in the back. He doesn't need to be told twice. "So, do I keep showing you the scenic route or have you got somewhere to go?"

She doesn't respond. Soon enough the car peels off the park and into more indistinct streets that Olivia has never seen.

"I know what that's like, you know? Feeling lost," Henry breaks the silence after a while, driving slowly down some alley or the other. "Years ago, I was in a bad way. Got into some rotten business with some rotten people. I couldn't seem to get out, couldn't pull myself away. I woke up one day and I looked at myself in the mirror, and I realized...I didn't really know the man lookin' back anymore. My wife, she...we weren't married yet, but she believed in me. She was the only one, but she was enough. I thought, if she could see these things in me, if she could love me even then, there had to be something good in me that I was missing. She's been my safe place ever since. Sounds hippie, but I guess what I'm sayin' is...have faith, you know? There's always gonna be something that'll help you keep going. You just have to know where to look."

Olivia thinks of Rachel, bright under the sun, quick to love, with that capacity for joy that she has always lacked, always envied; she thinks of Ella, barely seven years old, sweet and giggling and looking at her like she hung the moon, asking for one more story before going to bed and paying rapt attention to every word though she knows them all; Charlie, steadfast, offering security when they both know there's none, believing her irrational words and nonsensical explanations without a question when she needs it most; lovely Sonia, always welcoming and warm when she drags her husband out of bed in the middle of the night because there's something that can't wait for the sun to rise; Broyles, of the deep heart and the grudging admiration, the genuine respect that no superior has ever handed quite so openly to her; Astrid, patient, kind, the only reality check in a world that refuses to makes sense, who's held her together without knowing on occasions when Olivia has been sure she's misplaced her sanity, her life. And Walter. Walter who is brilliant, and mad, a child and a tyrant, who has lost and taken more than any man and only sometimes regrets it. The father she has, as tired, as lonely, as broken as she.

These are her people. Without them, she'd be lost, she'd be nothing. She is here. But she knows where to find them, how to reach them. Part of her just doesn't want to admit it. Part of her just wants to give up.

_You were always the strong one._

The Cortexiphan weighs her leg down like a cement block. She's been selling Walter short; maybe she can, after all, go home.

"Henry," Olivia says. "Take me to Boston."

 

***

 

Tactical picks them up mere minutes after Charlie's call, loads them on the back of the black van with half a dozen armoured agents ready for action. Liv is wide awake, but there's an itch between her shoulders, a stiffness in her neck. Blinking feels like rubbing sand behind her eyelids. Focusing on a single thought is getting harder.

Peter takes one look at her, rolls his eyes, and tosses the little tin box with his stash of Dexedrine onto her lap. "Don't take more than you're supposed to. I've got enough with my own paranoia."

"Yes, mother." At least he always remembers these things. She is aware, vaguely, that she's treating him unfairly, that he'd never deliberately put Lincoln in harm's way. He has been enough of a scheming little shit, however, that she refuses to give two fucks about fairness where it pertains him. Liv's going to punch him so hard he'll be seeing stars out of his left eye for a while.

She dry swallows the pills, takes the gun from her holster, checks the magazine. Satisfied, she loads it in with a click, feels the spring in the chamber clench and release.  "Say, if my aim slipped when I shot her, would it be suicide or murder?"

Charlie grunts from his seat, looking out the window, sweating bullets in the heat. "A question for the philosophers, kiddo."

"A shame," Peter says. "It would be a shame." His look is dour. Despite their differences, they agree on this: her aim will not slip.

An enemy captured, an enemy broken, is much more valuable to them than an enemy dead. The survival of their world is limited, sooner rather than later, it is going to end. But it is _their_ world, and it falls to them to protect it. Whatever the cost.

 

***

 

The trees are dead.

The highway extends before them, nearly deserted, the sun still shinning on the pavement. Light bounces off gray, leafless branches hanging limp from the husks of the tree-trunks framing the road, slick and weather-smooth, the way only long dead wood can look.

A murmur fills the air, like the rush of wind on a butterfly's wings. The radio is on, the volume low. It is only noise devised to fill the silence, trick it into thinking of something other than its own mortality. Olivia doesn't mind it. She looks at the world outside, catalogues the differences as they pass. It's strange. Jarring, how these worlds she keeps trying in vain to protect could be just the same, if she were blind to their details.

She loses track of time after the second hour, lets the static from the radio flush out the thoughts in her head, lets it replace them. It is a relief. Olivia is too well trained to entertain oblivion, but she doesn't need to think to retain detail. For that, all she needs are open eyes.

The driver hasn't said so much as a word since the last time they stopped for gas, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Connecticut. He keeps throwing glances at her through the rear view mirror, each of them more anxious than the one preceding. Like he's waiting for her to lose it and paint the windshield with his brains. He'd been stunned at her chosen destination, but had made no move to dissuade her. Olivia still finds something about his acquiescence suspicious, but can't pinpoint what.

At last, the city unfolds, and she finds a reason for the growing terror in the driver's eyes. Boston is a cemetery. Buildings on either side of the street lie covered in some translucent yellow matter that, were it not for the unchanging reflection of the light over its cut-crystal facets, Olivia would be worried of it advancing towards them.

So this is amber, she thinks, coming back to herself, remembering her hours of interrogation with the man that would be Walter's son in another life. There does not seem to be an end to it, as they move farther from the outskirt and into the city proper.

During her first year at Fringe, what feels like a lifetime ago and but was really only months, her team had caught a case where someone unleashed a gas that solidified into stuff like this on a commuter bus. It had seemed a horrible fate then. To see it covering block upon block of this once bustling city, to see the people trapped in it....Olivia shivers, blinks away the thought.

The cab slows down to inner city speed limits, though the only traffic is made up of abandoned shopping carts and a few homeless stragglers wading in and out of amber-less alleys. Henry's eyes are wide, and fleeting over the mirror, over the city.

"How long has it been?" Olivia finds herself asking.

"What?" The question startles him.

"How long has it been since the city was... abandoned?"

"Couple years. You really don't remember any of it?"

There is nothing to remember, she wants to tell him. Instead, she says, "I'm not crazy."

"N-no ma'am, of course not. Where did you want to go?"

Olivia tells him.

 

***

 

This is what happens when she lets her guard down for a minute. When she tricks herself into believing in people. The rumble of engines can be heard over the background noise of the Boston necropolis. Judging by the volume of the siren, the tactical vans can only be blocks behind them. There is only one reason they could have found her.

"What did you _do_?" Olivia shouts, the gun heavy in her outstretched arm.

"I--I, d-don't shoot, don't shoot! Look lady, you don't remember me, but we've met!" The cab driver gesticulates wildly, hands everywhere at once in the air around him. "I'm a friend of your captain. He's gonna get here soon, and you're gonna be safe, okay?"

"Captain? Who did you call?"

"Uh, Peter? You know, with Fringe division?"

 God, she's not even surprised. If her heart were not beating a drumroll on her throat, she'd laugh. Of all the cabs in the world, she had to go pick the one with the direct line to the people she's trying so very hard to leave behind. So much for luck, so much for chance.

Olivia shoots the car's windshield, startles the driver into falling down on his ass so he can't follow her as she steps back, away from the sidewalk. She turns, runs.

The steps into the Kresge Building beckon her home.

 

***

 

_Kresge Building, Harvard. Basement lab._

 

Olivia's learnt something new today: Cortexiphan _burns._ Not like fire. Not like getting too close to liquid nitrogen, or jumping into ice-cold water. It starts as an itch that unfurls. It crawls up the crook of her arm, eating through bone, into marrow, like acid. It has never felt this intense before. Then again, her sensory perception of it has always been muddled by Walter's accompanying cocktail of drugs. Relaxants most of the time, LSD more often than Olivia would like. Anesthetics, sometimes, whenever they've scheduled an incremental increase in dosage. Now she knows why.

The first needle makes every muscle in her arm and upper back clench in shock, the invading liquid cold, painful. She bites clean through the skin of her lip, tastes the copper of blood on her tongue, tries to keep her breathing steady. At least the track marks on her arms serve as guides, show her where to puncture without causing more lasting damage.

The second makes the room spin above her, makes the glimmer unbearably brighter, the pain sharp like an icepick through the eye. She clutches at the edge of the open tank, glad she had the foresight to sit down before she started, swallows back the bitter taste of bile.

Oversensitive hearing detects shouting, a multitude of footsteps falling in unison on the hallway above, the heavy clicking of gun safeties being unlocked. The rush of water falling, filling the tank, fades back to ambient sound. Without the salt she won't float. It occurs to her that it would be amusing, on a cosmic level, if she were to come all this way just to drown in a steel coffin. Her sense of humour keeps getting blacker.

The third dose goes in and Olivia bends over, her knees against her forehead stop her from toppling over. She is certain her head is splitting in half. The room is unbearably warm, heat streaking through the air, bending surfaces into distorted shapes. Everything slows down. Everything except her heart--the unsteady rhythm ratchets, air escapes her lungs in gasps, quick and sharp.

The footsteps come closer, grow louder. She can almost taste their anger.

Olivia lets herself fall backwards into the water, like a diver, hits the floor of the tank with a clang. Imagine the universe flowing though you, says Walter, his voice a disembodied echo in the darkness. _Imagine._

She closes her eyes, feels the thousand sounds around her cut out. The water makes everything heavy but she feels weightless. The pain is there, but it does not matter. The metal at her back falls away, reveals darkness, like a door opening into the abyss. Olivia falls, and falls, and wants to keep falling. Instinct tells her that hitting the bottom means safety.

Something heavy hits the water, something that pushes her down physically, but not away. And then there are hands grasping at her, and bright shimmering light on her open eyes, and hot rage, not hers, sliding up against her spine, and Olivia--blessedly, finally-- is afraid.

 

***

 

_Kresge Building, Harvard. Basement Lab._

"Walter! What did I say about experimenting with food?" Astrid Farnsworth stops at the top of the stairs, hands on her hips, surveying the damage. Behind her, the stencilled door swings shut with the creak of old hinges and the rattle of glass.

She sees Agent Lee exit the office from the corner of her eye, his sleeves rolled up and his tie slack. He cringes at the sight of the bottles of soda strewn on the ground, at the gallon of cherry flavoured cola drying into a sticky, semi-permanent film that, if they let dry, Astrid knows they're never getting off the lab's floor.

The perpetrator and owner of said lab lies on the old leather recliner by the stereo, his eyes closed. Drugged unconscious, guessing from the bags on the IV pole beside him, and the line running down to the back of his hand. A pair of full sized, sturdy headphones around his ears complete a picture that has become familiar since Olivia was left for dead on the other side. Astrid shakes her head, drops her arms.

"He's been under for hours," Agent Lee says. Bewilderment tinges his features.

"Don't worry about it. He gets like this without work. He's bounce back when something comes up."

"I think it's my fault."

Astrid turns to look at him, frowns. "Why would it be?"

"We were playing chess. He complimented my skills, I suppose." He shrugs. "It was a little backhanded. I...asked him if Agent Dunham used to play with him, before...before."

She hangs her jacket on the coat hanger by Gene's stall, then comes back to his side. Pats his arm. "It's not your fault, Agent Lee. He's just having a hard time adjusting. They were close."

He nods. "Please, call me Lincoln." It's the third time he's told her that in the past month. She says nothing, and he turns for the door. "I'll get a mop."

Sweet guy. Still clueless, but sweet nonetheless. Astrid calls after him, "Get a bucket, too, if you can."

She shudders to think of what Fringe Division will make him, in a year's time.

Astrid pats Gene between the eyes, lets her nuzzle the sleeve of her plaid blazer. She picks out a treat from the jar on the bench beside the stall, raises it for the cow's appraisal. A leathery tongue scrapes the treat off her palm. The initial disgust she felt at the alien sensation has long since been a thing of the past.

"Good girl."

In the office, she finds Lee has finally opened the last of Olivia's Massive Dynamic files--the ones she'd lifted from headquarters, the ones Broyles was supposed to not know about. Being in here is eerie. The new head of her team has taken painstaking measures to keep the office the way it was handed to him, so much so that Astrid still half-expects to see Olivia hunched over pictures and criminology reports whenever she steps through the door.

The way he works is similar as well, and she thinks that it is the man's quiet, driven focus and solid presence that has had Walter crawling up the walls since Lee was transferred up from Hartford. He expects to see Olivia too, when he feels the other agent's presence and turns to look. Like a child, the man has never done well with disappointment.

Astrid drops her blazer on the empty chair across from Lee's place, rolls her head from side to side to relieve her neck of the stiffness of a morning of meetings. She exchanges her work shoes for the rubber boots she's taken to keeping after one-too-many Walter emergencies, and leaves the office behind.

Back in the main lab, she picks up the soda bottles and the candy off the ground and into a waste basket. She is in the process of rearranging the skewed and disorderly glassware the way she knows Walter prefers, her back to the door, when the hollow, metallic sound of something striking the tank makes her startle.

Expecting Agent Lee to have come back and perhaps tripped, Astrid turns. The burette in her hands shatters when it hits the ground.

For a long time after it happens, Astrid will remember the moment the tank's doors flew open in slow motion, with perfect detail, up to the feeling of gripping panic that now rises up from her gut to settle at the bottom of her sternum. As she screams, one body drags another through the mouth of the rusting steel beast and into the light. A man and a woman, going at each other's throats like wet dogs. The man is unfamiliar, but the woman...the woman she knows.

Olivia, biting on the man's forearm in an effort to slacken his choke-hold, slides one of her flailing feet between his, hooks her foot behind his ankle as he steps back to counter the momentum of yanking her weight off the ground. They fall, and he groans at the elbow she jabs against his ribs, but recovers as her weight rolls off him, poised to flee but unnaturally unsteady. He grabs the white scrubs by the back of the collar, slams her back beside him. He rises to a crouch with shoulders tense and arm pulled back, a heavy fist curled and ready to fall, but hesitates at the last second, falters in his attack.

Astrid takes advantage of that second to crash an Erlenmeyer flask onto his crown. It draws blood in shattering, and the man yelps, turns. Astrid's knee to the side of his head puts him down with a soft grunt. She draws her gun, for good measure though she's certain the man will not be waking up for a while.

Beside her, Olivia tries to stand, but she is shaking so hard she falls, her pupils so dilated Astrid has to squint to see a colour different from black. 

"...Astrid."

Her name was not framed as a question, but Astrid nods in reassurance anyway, tears in her eyes. She reaches for her teammate, almost afraid of her hand grasping at nothing but air. Her hand hits flesh, damp and burning up, but solid.  "Welcome back."

Olivia smiles. Her eyes roll back into her head and the body beneath Astrid's hand goes slack. She falls limp, like a rag doll, to the cola-covered floor of Walter Bishop's lab.

 

 

**End Act I**

 


End file.
